Has it Really Been Two Years?

My first blog posting was, according to the list in the settings panel, made on 5^th November 2007. This means that my blog is now two years old today!

For your reading pleasure today, here is another CCT article for you.

Captain's Computer Tips: V - Safety (2) - Alternative Browsers

In this article I'm going to talk about alternative web browsers. By alternative, I mean browsers that can be used in place of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE). Despite being the most popular browser in terms of the numbers of users, IE is notorious for its problems, among which are:

• It has had the most security issues by far, compared with other browsers. Even the latest version (8 at the time of writing) is still considered by many as the one most vulnerable to malicious attacks.
• It is the least compatible browser in terms of compliance with web standards. This fact, coupled with the fact that IE has been and still is the most used browser, has lead to an utter mess when it comes to web pages, their design, and browser compatibility. IE8 has something called "compatibility view" mode which, ironically and confusingly, makes it render badly designed web pages with less errors.
• It has been deemed by many, and has proved to be in my experience, the slowest of all the popular web browsers. This will obviously reduce your efficiency and effectiveness when browsing the web, both for business purposes and for leisure activities.

Browsers for Consideration

Here are some of the browsers that you may wish to consider as replacements for IE. Note that they can all be downloaded and installed free of charge!

Browser	Producer	Notes
Chrome	Google	Very simple and straightforward to install. Easy to use but somewhat lacking in advanced features.
Firefox	Mozilla Open Source project	Extremely popular and a good balance between number of features and ease of use.
Internet Exploder	Microsoft	Most popular but most problematic, in the opinion of many, myself included.
Opera	Opera Software	Very clean and simple interface. Features are easy and effective. Good support for e-mail and RSS feeds.
Safari	Apple	Claims to be the fastest but while this may be true on Macintosh platforms, is certainly not true on Windows.

I've not included text-only browsers, such as Lynx, as I have no experience of those. I would highly recommend that you give these a try. You might be surprised at how your web browsing experience is improved. My personal favourite is Opera.

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Don't forget to let me know if you have any ideas for future articles.

Blog Tour Guest Visitor: Cally Taylor

For those of you who don't already know her, please allow me to introduce Cally Taylor, whose novel Heaven Can Wait is now published. Cally has kindly agreed to pay me a visit here as part of her blog tour to promote the book. So Cally, here are a few questions for you about your writing process... How did you pick the genre for your novel? Is romantic comedy your favourite thing to read as well as write? I didn't deliberately pick a genre I just wrote what came most naturally to me - and that turned out to be romantic-comedy! I read all kinds of books, everything from literary to sci-fi and I'm a big fan of romantic-comedies. I've been reading "chick-lit" since Ralph's Party by Lisa Jewell was published in 1999. I also enjoy watching romantic-comedies and have built up quite an impressive DVD collection.

2. Did you specifically write for a commercial market or did you just write a good story and hope it fitted the market?

   I hoped my book would be commercial but, because there wasn't an established market in the UK for supernatural romantic-comedies at the time (even though there was in the States), there was a bit of a risk that publishers wouldn't be interested. Luckily they were! To be honest I didn't worry about whether or not my book would get a publishing deal while I was writing it - I just wanted to write and finish a novel.

3. Do you work to a regular writing timetable in order to meet your deadlines?

   Nope, I make it up as I go along! When I was writing Heaven Can Wait I wrote nearly every night for three months and three weeks and squeezed in a social life where I could. With my second book I'm squeezing the writing around my social life! As a result it took me a lot longer to write the first draft (seven months) and now I'm having to work to a timetable so I can deliver it to my editor on time.

4. How did you create the plot and storyline for your novel? Did you work to a design or did it grow and evolve organically?

   When I came up with the idea for Heaven Can Wait I knew what the first few scenes would be, and what happen at the end, but not how I'd get from A to B! I had to make that bit up as I went along - which was quite a scary way to approach novel-writing but also exciting because I never knew what my characters would do next.

5. A similar question about your characters: Did you design the characters, their traits and their behaviours up-front, or did they take on a life of their own once the writing was under way?

   I know a few things about my characters before I start. I know what their goals and fears are, what they look like and a little bit about their pasts but I only really get to know them as I'm writing.

6. Did you write the story in order from beginning, through middle to end, or did you work with a set of scenes and chapters, filling in the details in whatever order you saw fit?

   Yes, I start at the beginning and work through to the end. Because I never know what happens in the middle of my novels I have to work that way.

7. Are there particular planning techniques that you use, such as storyboards, time lines and character profiles?

   I tend to do things like that after I've finished the first draft and before I start editing. I write a summary of each chapter on an index card, noting down who's in that chapter and what happens (using different coloured cards to indicate main plot or sub plot), and lay them out on the floor. I can then see at a glance whether the novel is balanced or not.

   When I've got the balance right I do something similar, but this time in an Excel spread sheet. I create a row for each chapter and then, in the columns, fill in the time line, setting and the first and last lines of each chapter. I do that to check that a) the time line and settings don't jump around all over the place and b) each chapter starts with a hook and ends with a bit of a cliffhanger.

8. Tell us about any software that you use for writing your fiction? Do you write longhand, straight to word-processor, or something more sophisticated?

   When I'm brainstorming an idea for a new novel I use a notebook and scribble down everything that comes into my head. When I actually start writing I use my laptop and write into yWriter (free novel-writing software). I couldn't use anything else now. I love how easily you can access the different chapters and scenes, drag them around and edit them.

9. Once your first draft has been completed, how do you get your manuscript into shape? Do you rely on trusted readers and/or pay for professional critiques?

   With Heaven Can Wait I asked a couple of trusted readers to take a look at the synopsis and posted the first five chapters on the Women's Fiction forum on www.writewords.org.uk. That was it though and Darley was the first person, other than me, to read the whole novel. I don't think I'm going to have enough time to get feedback on my second novel before I deliver it to my editor and agent and that's a bit of a scary prospect!

10. Do you use any "how to" books? If so, which ones would you recommend to other writers?

    Do I? I've got two shelves full of them! Some are more useful than others obviously and my favourites include: Writing the Romantic Comedy by Billy Mernit, Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell, Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card and Self-editing for Fiction Writers by Browne and King.

11. How did you go about choosing your agent/publisher?

    I bought a copy of the Writers and Artists' Yearbook and went through the agents looking for the ones that represented chick-lit and women's fiction. I then put a star by the ones who represented authors whose novels I'd enjoyed and approached my "top six". My agent decided which publishers to approach.

12. How much work do authors themselves have to do these days to publish and promote their books, compared with the work the agent/publisher does?

    I don't have anything to do with who publishes my novels - that's my agent's job (and she does it very well!) - but I have been doing quite a bit to try and promote Heaven Can Wait. Obviously my publisher does a lot to promote it at a national level so what I've been doing is trying to promote it on a smaller, more local level as well as trying to raise awareness in blog-world!

13. What's the biggest lesson you learned during the production of your first novel?

    Get your second novel written, edited and polished before you start promoting your first one! Trying to do both, and hold down a day job, is an almost impossible task and occasionally very stressful. I need to clone myself!

Finally, what's next on your writing agenda? Finish editing novel 2 and give it a good polish before delivering it to my editor on 1st December. Then I'm going to take a bit of a break from writing over Christmas (although I'm sure I'll end up scribbling down ideas for novel 3!) Thanks for stopping by Cally, I hope you enjoy the rest of the tour. Meanwhile, I've got some reading to do... Heaven Can Wait is available from Amazon and other good book shops. Also, there's a short story competition on Cally's blog to celebrate the book's release.

Further Adventures in the Highlands

Well, despite a shaky start I managed to drag myself around the Aviemore half-marathon in just over two hours. 2:00:33 to be precise. It's a great course with spectacular views of Loch Morlich and the Cairngorms. It's also downhill! Well, net downhill anyway. I managed to stay dry until the last few miles when the heavens opened and the rain came down. I also managed to do some canoeing, orienteering and plenty of mountain-biking during my long weekend stay. No epics on Braireach though, unlike some people I could mention.

Now I'm back in Sunny Sutton (yeah right) and resuming my search for employment. My new computer is behaving itself, despite being loaded with Vista and all sorts of other pre-installed fat that no amount of exercise seems to shift.

That reminds me, there's still plenty of training for me to do before the next half-marathon in Lanzarote...

Practising What I Preach

Remember that article I wrote about computer backups? Well, last week I had to "eat my own dog food" as they sometimes say in software engineering circles. Yes, you've guessed it, I had a computer failure. My five-and-a-half-year-old PC went into a coma and never recovered, despite some desperate attempted surgery.

There's a fault on the motherboard that caused the CPU to shut down after a minute or so. Probably some kind of overheating problem. Anyway, it would be uneconomical to have it repaired, so the machine has been consigned to the Captain's Museum of Defunct Hardware. I think the hard disk is intact, though I haven't been able to prove that yet, so in theory I could retrieve data from that. As it happens though, I don't need to! I lost absolutely nothing because I backed up on Wednesday evening and the machine failed first thing on Thursday morning. To be honest, I don't think I'd ever have lived it down, had this not been the case.

On Friday I splashed out on a shiny new lap-top with a much higher specification (I won't bore you with it) for about only half the price of my old machine. I say lap-top but, despite weighing only 3 kg or so, the thing is enormous. I particularly like the massive wide screen, Ideal for watching Prison Break.

Restoration from my backups was more difficult than I'd anticipated. Before you call me a hypocrite though, let me assure you that this was not my fault! I'd envisaged replacing the hardware and operating system, then simply re-installing software and replacing my files from backup media. What I hadn't foreseen was the need to migrate from Windows XP to Vista. Again, I won't bore you with the details but let's just say it presented some challenges - what business types call "opportunity" (Houston, we have an opportunity).

Anyway, now I'm back up and running and in the land of cyber-space once more. Not much else to report really but watch this space for a special guest in a forthcoming article. In the mean time, I'll be off to run the Aviemore Half-marathon this weekend. Wish me luck.

Back from Canada

Hi folks, I'm back from my holiday in Vancouver, which was absolutely brilliant. Here's a short list of a few things that my friends and I got up to.

• Lots of eating and drinking. Shock! horror!
  Sammy J Peppers, one of the restaurants we visited, has the hottest chilli sauces on the planet.
• Walking around various waterfronts, taking photos.
• A visit to the aquarium in Stanley Park.
• Cycling around the sea wall in Stanley Park and False Creek.
• Driving a car on the other side of the road. Only a few near-misses.
• A visit to Lynn Canyon. Lots of hiking, including crossing a very wobbly suspension bridge.
• Visit to the University of British Columbia, including the Museum of Anthropology, followed by walking through the country parks of the endowment lands.
• Kayaking and canoeing in Deep Cove.
• Huffing and puffing pour way up the Grouse Grind, on Grouse Mountain. A short 3 km hike but with 850 m of vertical ascent.
• Almost running across the outdoor set of a filming crew. They were making an episode of Fringe, so I was told.

I also managed to get in four training runs, totalling just over 24 km. Still a long way to go until I'm fit for the Aviemore half-marathon next month.

I didn't take all that many photos this year but there are a few posted on faceache.

Now it's back to the serious business of choosing a career and applying for jobs...