Guild Wars Third Impressions
I am a couple of weeks into Guild Wars 2 and have had time to poke around a bit, get over the initial glitz of the launch and see a bit more of the world. What do I think now? I am still impressed. If...
View ArticleDragonDictate 3
I suffer from RSI. When it gets really bad I switch to a speech recognition software such as Dragon Naturally Speaking or DragonDictate. Over the years I have tested a lot of speech recognition systems...
View ArticleMacHeist 4
While I am talking about software I may as well recommend the MacHeist Bundle. At $29 this is a real bargain, a bundle of 17 apps that includes Scrivener and a 15 month sub to Evernote Premium– two of...
View ArticleFolding Text
Recently I paid £28 on the Apple app store for a copy of Mellel 3, a word processor I don’t intend to use. This is more than just an example of my relentless addiction to acquiring software (honest!)....
View ArticleNotational Velocity
Notational Velocity is a very simple-looking but surprisingly sophisticated little program for the Mac. It is intended to allow you to make and track notes very, very quickly. You just open it and...
View ArticleEvernote Clearly
As long-term readers of this blog will know I use Evernote a lot. It is my go-to program for storing ideas and web clippings. I also keep travel documents such as e-tickets in it and maps of places I...
View ArticleIn Praise of Good Old Games
It all started a few years back when I bought a new notebook computer, one without a disk drive, as is becoming more and more the fashion these days. I had a sudden hankering to play Age of Wonders:...
View ArticleStrategy Games Sale at Good Old Games
Good Old Games is having a sale of strategy games over this weekend. All of the Age of Wonders games and several of the Heroes of Might and Magic games along with many good city management games and...
View ArticleFor the Age of Wonders Fans Among You
There’s a very nice article about the new Age of Wonders game here. I am so looking forward to this game — a mashup of the old Age of Wonders turn-based grand strategy fantasy gaming and Total War...
View ArticleIf You Can Push Save On Your Word-Processor You Can Create An Ebook
Some of you may remember me claiming some time ago that pretty soon you would be able to create an ebook by pushing the save button on your word-processor. Little did I know that it was close to...
View ArticleWorkflow 2013
I’m currently working on The Fall of Macharius and, since I am right in the middle of a new novel, now seems like a good time to talk about the tools I use and my workflow. It’s on my mind and a nice...
View ArticleProcrastination Cascades
If you’re anything like me you can always find an excuse not to sit down and write. And even when you start, you can probably find ways of stopping yourself. This has become particularly evident to me...
View ArticleHow to Format Your Novel For Kindle, Nook, the iBookstore, Smashwords and...
Way back in the summer on Kindleboards and in other places I kept reading about people laying out their print books for CreateSpace using Scrivener. Long term readers of this blog will know that I...
View ArticleWhite Screen of Death
My apologies to those of you who glanced at the blog yesterday and found only a blank white screen. You were encountering a fairly well known WordPress flaw colloquially known as the White Screen of...
View ArticleThe Advantages of Markdown
I was going to review the writing app Ulysses 3.1 today but David Hewson saved me the bother. If you’re interested I suggest you take a look at David’s thorough and fair review. I’ll just add that, as...
View ArticleRead Stealer of Flesh Free Online
You can read the first book in the Kormak Saga free online here. This is a result of my project to archive all of my books in markdown format for easy future reference. To create it, I found the...
View ArticleInvisible Software
For the past couple of weeks I have been living in a strange alternative universe where proprietary formatting for applications never happened. I have been storing my to do list on my phone and editing...
View ArticleStarting A Mailing List
Every writer should have a mailing list. That’s one of those of those bits of advice that you will get sooner or later if you hang around writers’ boards on the internet long enough. It also happens to...
View ArticleImproving Writing Workflows
I changed my workflow a lot this year. The most important alteration was that I started using markdown as much as possible. I’ve talked about the advantages before so I won’t go into them again here....
View ArticleFirst Impressions: Blogo
I am testing a new blogging application called, appropriately enough, Blogo today. It’s a very nice looking piece of Mac software that comes very highly recommended (by Apple no less). I was intrigued...
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