Archive for February 2007

Fire and Knowledge has pulled together a nice guide on writing principles based on two of my favorite books, On Writing Well and Strunk and White. It answers four key questions many of us ask about writing. The appendices include Orwell’s Six Rules of Clear English and Mark Twain’s Rules of Story Writing.

One of the best ways to get better is to write, write, write. That’s why blogging makes a great tool for writers. I start my weekdays with at least two blog entries: One here and one at InformIT. Then, when I find an interesting topic and have the time, I also post at Bionic Ear.

Another way to practice — and it only takes 60 seconds a day — is with Steven Wilbur’s exercises posted on his web site. Write away!

This story: Do You Text While Driving? gives a real-life example of what happens when you text and drive. I believe the same happens with cell phones and driving even if you have a hands-free handset. I may not hear like the normal person, but I noticed that when I listen to a song where I know the lyrics — that I make more mistakes when following the lyrics (listening, not reading).

We’ve all heard the media say, “Don’t talk and drive…” yet many continue to do it. Maybe we need real stories:

Driving and talking accidents

Stay safe.

The business style games just keep coming. In these games, we play an owner or a worker bee in a business, racing to fulfill customer orders and keep them happy. Stand O’ Food comes closest to resembling a big McFast Food chain.

Stand O’Food has two game types: Meal Quest (serve customers until completing the level) and Lunch Rush (endlessly serving folks). I made decent progress in Meal Quest when the game up and shut down on me. In re-opening the game, I lost my saved game and had to start over. Aggravating, but I know many things can cause a game to shut down and aren’t always the fault of the game.

The game starts slowly as you fill simple orders and customers slowly line up. But after climbing a few levels, the orders get complicated and you can’t always see an ingredient in a sandwich even when moving the mouse pointer over the sandwich to view it a little larger.

Since the ingredients appear in no particular order on conveyor belts, you have to quickly figure out what food item you’ll take from which rolling thing to ensure you don’t get stuck with an unavailable ingredient. I did get a kick out of the game when I received vegetarian and bread-less orders. The variety of orders gives the game a needed lift.

Stand O’Food comes with a tutorial, but it annoyed me because it kept interrupting the game to let me know about a new sandwich, so I turned it off. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out when certain things occurred like the big dollar sign or the crane appearing.

The graphics also don’t have the high quality found in other games. I prefer not to take up the full screen when playing my games so I can switch to other applications faster, but this one takes up the full screen no matter which option I choose. It also hogs the computer’s memory more than any other game I’ve played recently. When clicking ahead or clicking buttons from the upgrade page, the buttons don’t always work (even when accurate) and this can mess up an order. More frustration.

In the game, you make the food and it needs to be in the same order as the customer’s request, you add upgrades based on how much money you have and you move from store to store as you advance in the Meal Quest game. The stores contain stars, which I assume represent the difficulty. They also have names that give you a hint as to what kind of sandwiches (over 80) you’ll make. These features don’t add to the fun as they do in other similar games.

The nice thing about these games is you can try them before plunking down lots o’ cash (well, not that much). Personally, I think the Diner Dash series and Cake Mania games offer more than Stand O’Food. I haven’t played Delicious Deluxe, but from reading its description and checking the screen shots, it may be a better choice.

Hey, the game is one of the most popular as of this writing, so my opinion doesn’t match the majority. Tell us what you think.

Try this game free.

Download the game from Big Fish Games.

Due to a big family event coming this month, I’ve been trying to get work done ahead so I can take a few days off. Alas, I came down with the flu and have been in slow mode all week. I only had one bad day where I stayed in bed all day — the flu usually knocks me off my feet for three days.

Over the years, I’ve picked up remedies, cures, and tricks like anyone else. Some work. Some don’t. Here are some of the ones I use or others claim that work for them:

* Vitamin E: Don’t go to the canned or refrigerated juices for this, however, because they’re pasteurized. Get it from the real fruit, Halls Fruit Breezers (my go to flavor is Citrus Blend), or a good quality brand of vitamins.

* Take Echinacea the minute you feel “something coming on.” This never worked for me.

* Drink lots of fluids that don’t have caffeine or other chemicals that steal the fluids right back from you. Water is best, of course.

* Pour hydrogen peroxide in your ears the minute you feel “something coming on.” One guy claims he has never gotten sick as a result. I tried it, but still got the flu.

* REST! In spite of knowing I have a big event to prepare for, I listened to my body and took a whole day of rest. Though I felt a little better yesterday, by the afternoon I was ready to crash. So back to bed for a nap.

* Cut the workload. I told one client I couldn’t complete an assignment with a difficult to make deadline. Which do you want? Tell the client you can’t do something or turn in a lousy work product?

* Ask for Tamiflu and request it for family members as a preventative. One family had a member with the flu AND pneumonia. Everyone took Tamiflu and no one got the flu. In my family, when my son got the flu — my other two kids took Tamiflu and we adults didn’t. We adults got the flu, the other kids didn’t. Warning: The liquid form (for kids weighing less than a specific amount) is hard to keep down. Both kids gagged on it. My son and I both had flu shots, too. Problem with the flu is that it comes in different strains.

* Wash hands often. My kids give me a hard time about this.

What works for you?

You’ve probably come across an email, a web site or a free download that talks about how setting up a niche site can bring in lots of money without using advertising from publishers like Google, Yahoo and so on. A colleague had been telling me that I should set up a similar site because I already have the ability to produce content and articles.

I had thought about it ages ago and decided it wasn’t worth it. A niche site is one focus on a specific area (hockey equipment, lamps and laser treatments, for example) keywords all over the place, headers, footers, navigation, body and after looking around the site — you figure out it’s mostly fluff.

This article explains part of the reason why I don’t think it’ll work without putting hours into it. Not five hours like many claim… but weeks. I believe the best thing to do is provide fresh and honest content, and if possible, sell a product. That’s another problem area, however. Funny thing is that the guy promotes his own product at the end. Same thing. Nothing new.

Many of these sites sell packages of CDs, electronic files with documentation and videos telling you about their system or how to do something so well that you can make a ton of money. Well, there are so many freebies and people selling these products that few will want to shell out the money unless they know about the person’s reputation.

I’ve got hundreds of PDF files sitting on my hard drive. I just remember those whenever someone comes along selling products promising everything or making you better at something. Truthfully, I wasn’t impressed with the reports and didn’t think they were worth the money.

I know some have done very well. It’s this group that often gets the word out to the masses and that’s how they get the bucks. No doubt, many will argue against me. Please do. I love to hear all sides of a story.

Confusing headline? Just echoing the sign I saw in an allergist’s office. Has a few problems, doesn’t it? Apologies for the bad looking photo — “shot” with a camera phone with not so hot functionality.

It’s true. Fisher Price sells MP3 Kid-Tough Players for Toddlers as well as digital cameras, but we couldn’t find digital cameras anywhere — it was a popular Christmas gift. They’re available again and my little guy will have to wait till his birthday in the spring to get it.

My son loves listening to music on his MP3. So far, it has survived being dropped, getting caught on furniture corners and being dragged. The software is easy for a parent to use except for a couple of usability problems.

The software kept reporting the firmware has been updated and asked if I wanted to update it. Finally, I believe after rebooting the computer and turning the MP3 player off and back on, it stopped asking. The problem is the second instruction where it says to click the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon to restart the player. Well, where is it?

The “Remove from Player” button is for removing songs. I searched the documents, Fisher-Price’s web site, the Internet… nada. Sounds like someone forgot to add the feature or remove the error message.

This week, we’ve lost two wonderful writers who had their unique style: Sidney Sheldon and fellow Texan Molly Ivins.

Sidney Sheldon’s books gripped me. It’s cliche’, but I couldn’t put them down unless my weight of eyelids trying to go to sleep forced me to. The only book I didn’t like was The Doomsday Conspiracy. It strayed from what he typically wrote.

In reading about him, I learned he edited his books 12 to 15 times. It could take him a year to rewrite the book. I admire him for his patience and ability to edit repeatedly. I can barely stand reading my own stuff one time.

He created and produced I Dream of Jeannie? He won an Emmy for that show. He also wrote every episode of the seven-year series, The Patty Duke Show.” He won a Tony award for Redhead with Gwen Verdon and an Academy Award for The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer. In fact, authoring books didn’t come till after he had success on Broadway and on TV. Here is a IMDB list of all the TV and films he had done.

Molly Ivins. She was a political columnist and proud Texan. Known for her potshots at George Bush, she continued to crusade against Bush’s sending more troops to Iraq this month though very weak. The USA Today article had a typo (it has been corrected). She called Bush, “Shrub” not “Scrub” as originally reported.

On Texas politics, she said, “I believe politics is the finest form of entertainment in the state of Texas: better than the zoo, better than the circus, rougher than football, and even more aesthetically satisfying than baseball.”

That was the kind of content you could expect from her.

Ivins and I share one thing in common: Our love for Texas. Like the quote I read years ago, “When you meet someone for the first time who is from Texas or went to Harvard, you’ll know it.”

Just saw on Amazon that you can pre-order Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which releases on July 21, 2007. So much for a 7/7/7 date. However, Paul had an interesting theory about the 7/21/07 release date.

Book 6 says there are seven horcruxes. Two have been found, leaving five more. Since there are three 7s in 21, the date totals 5 sevens. So if the publisher couldn’t make the 7/7/7 release date, the 7/21/07 isn’t a bad one as it has meaning, too.

Rowling’s site doesn’t say anything about the date other than it’s the release date.