The week’s posts on a single page (most recent at the top):
Offline
I’m finding publishing a blog post every day quite challenging at the moment, time-wise.
So, for family reasons, and in the interests of quality, I’m taking a break from daily blogging for the first time since 12 September, 2018. That’s 406 days, which I’m proud of.
I will be back.
Thanks so much for your support.
Paul/Pazza
Computer Love
If your computer starts to slow down, there are one or two free tools I’d suggest you try.
One is CCleaner, which cleans up your computer’s harddrive by removing unused files allowing Windows to run faster and clearing space.
What unused files? Cookies, temporary files, trackers, and the like.
CCleaner is great and I’ve never had a reason to try anything else.
Easy
A handy little tool for images and graphics:
If you need an online image to be a particular size for your website, blog, social media profile or a document, or you’re trying to duplicate a graphic and need to know the measurements, I’d suggest PixelRuler3. Free to download, quick to install and easy to use.
Harder
While I’m generally not the biggest fan of Apple, I very much like some things they do.
Such as their advertising.
When faced with a task that needs doing – backing up your contacts list because you’re changing your phone number, for example – it’s worth remembering that you probably don’t have to do things the old, manual way. The harder way. There’s probably an app that’ll do the task for you in seconds:
Deep Sea Dive
When I think of internet education, I think of the fundamentals of working online, using the internet commercially, or simply getting the most our of it for day-to-day living, such as saving money on utility bills and banking, finding cheaper flights, or giving money to charity every time you shop at Amazon.
I think of subjects that span elements of media studies, computer science and business fundamentals, all taught in plain English.
For example:
- Understanding social media
- The basics of domains, websites and hosting
- The basics of SEO
- Internet marketing
- Why Google does what it does and how it makes its money
- Different business models online
The list of qualifying subjects is probably endless and knowledge of them would serve both children and adults as the opportunities to freelance improve and the economy shifts to rely more heavily on technology.
And today I came across something that looked a bit advanced for me. It looked like A level stuff rather than GCSE. It made me think that to acquire really deep knowledge, you’ve really got to want it.
Here’s what I’m talking about:
It was a blog post by Brian Dean, an SEO expert I respect, explaining the results of analysing five million desktop and mobile webpages to learn which factors impact page speed – ie, how long it takes a webpage to load, which is one of Google’s 200 ranking factors.
This post talked about TTFB (time to first byte) and CDNs (content delivery networks). I’d never heard of this stuff before.
So it made me realise: like every other academic subject, you can go deep. Really deep. Where you’ll find only the real experts and keenest students.
If you’re interested in Brian’s post, it’s here.
Xpander
My good friend Dave told me about a great little tool the other day: TextExpander.
It’s great if you’re often creating content that repeats certain elements – templates and so on.
You set up a library of snippets and when you type the appropriate one, it expands into the longer piece of text you need but shouldn’t have to write out in full every time (like I was doing until I saw Dave’s efficient alternative).
>>>Playlist<<<
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