Posts

Over the last week, I’ve been meaning to write a blog post about Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts. This morning, my brain had a great idea: Why don’t I create a whole new blog about self-help books? Yes, that’s much better than just writing this one piece. Then I can find the right domain name, fanny around with WordPress, and (best of all) create a content plan in Trello. Excruciatingly, this is exactly the sort of behaviour Burkeman cautions against: ...

I’d always promised myself I would learn to play the piano before the age of 50. I managed it by a gnat’s crotchet, starting just a couple of months ahead of my big birthday. Although I tried to learn in my late twenties, I gave up in disgust upon discovering the existence of the bass clef. Of course, I’d realised hand coordination was involved … but that note is a G for my right hand, but a C for my left? And I have to read two staves simultaneously? I don’t need this nonsense. I’ll just read a book instead. ...

It’s hard to get a sense of a big piece of writing, especially when Word keeps crashing. You’re scrolling endlessly, trying to hold thousands of words in your tired brain. You need to step away from the screen. In this blog post, I’ll explain how you can map your book or thesis. This technique helps you impose order on a baggy draft. Even better, it provides an excuse to buy stationery. ...

Even when we start out with a clear plan, it’s easy to end up with rambling draft. We know there’s an argument lurking within, but we’re darned if we can find it. While every writer is different, nearly everyone benefits from the technique of reverse outlining. I think it’s the best way to improve the flow of your argument and produce a coherent manuscript or thesis. There are many different approaches to this technique and there’s no right way of doing it. I’ll share my approach with you, which you can then adapt. ...

When Apple create a new iPhone, they don’t spent years perfecting it. They’re not busily anticipating the needs of all their customers, hoping everyone will love it immediately. Instead, they create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and get it to market as soon as possible. They know there are thousands of people who’ll queue overnight outside the Apple Store and spend a month’s salary on a slightly flawed product. Those early adopters will give them almost immediate feedback on what the developers need to do to bring it up to scratch. Apple make those improvements, then release an updated version. ...

Although it only takes a minute to create a Jekyll site, you could easily spend a large chunk of your life installing the environment. A query on the Write the Docs forum prompted me to share an easier way. In this post, I’ll show you how to create a Jekyll site in three steps, using the free Docker Community Edition and Bret Fisher’s images. If you want to use Docker to preview an existing Jekyll site, take a look at my other tutorial. ...

Introduction In the olden days, it would take hours to install and configure a web server on a local machine. It was especially fiddly if you wanted to recreate a specific environment for testing purposes. Happily, Docker has made our lives much easier. In this tutorial, we’ll package a simple website and nginx server as a Docker image. Anyone with Docker Desktop installed can then run that site in seconds without having to set up anything. ...

Introduction Jekyll is a beautifully simple way to build and deploy a static website. Well, it’s simple once you’ve got everything installed and configured. Unless you’re already confident with Ruby, it’ll probably take you most of a wet weekend to get it running consistently. Although the local installation is working well for me, I’m nervous it’ll break. I’m already encountering a few Ruby conflicts with other projects. Resolving those issues isn’t my idea of fun. Given I’ve been doing a lot of work with Docker lately, I decided to see whether I could run my site as a container instead. Plot spoiler: yes, I could! ...

In this short tutorial, I’ll show you how you can create a checklist in InDesign that’s both interactive and printable. I’m assuming you already know the basics of InDesign. If not, I recommend the InDesign Essentials course on Skillshare.

If you’re anything like me, you consume all sorts of content: books, blog posts, newsletters, and podcasts. It’s hard keeping track of it all. In this short demo, I’ll show you Readwise, a web-based tool for collecting, organising, and reviewing your highlights. I’m not associated in any way with Readwise, I just love it!