A valuable lesson for kids that I picked up a few years ago: Every job includes at least one element that you might not enjoy. Even footballers, musicians and DJs, who apparently have the world's best jobs, have to commit to things that they'd rather not do, whether...

I tried a bit of yoga today for the first time - and I managed to both stay upright and turn my phone to silent before the session, meaning I avoided the horrendous scenario of hearing the theme to Terry & June (my ringtone) blasting out of my phone just as...

After 13 years of working, studying, trying and failing online, you'd think I'd have learned my lesson. I tried with Naughty by Nature, a novel that didn't make it past the first draft despite me lining up a formatting person in the States, having a series of covers...

A simple lesson I've learned over the years is that things tend to take much longer than you think. Whether it's putting a quote together when pricing up a project for a new client, learning how to use a new piece of software, or - dare I say it - writing a book....

Sadly, some companies want to rip us off and then hide. Sometimes they hide behind anonymity, but there are two places where we can try to uncover a bit about companies online who want to avoid our awkward questions: A whois lookup website, to try to identify the...

Something I see lots and lots, online and off, is poor writing. Many will argue that it doesn't matter. Others will say language is always evolving, and they're right. Ignoring poor grammar and misspellings, what I think is more important is the ability to write...

A brief but important inted lesson for kids should involve teaching them how to search for and book train tickets and flights. Some questions to answer: Which are the best/most popular sites to search for flights, and why? What do those companies gain by offering that...

Yesterday I wrote that I once ran a blog called ForShianaAndMischa.com, a resource for my daughters. I stopped working on it and gave up ownership of that domain a while ago, and revisited it yesterday for the first time in ages. What's there baffles me: a ghostly,...

I love being a dad: telling terrible jokes, teaching Shiana and Mischa, my daughters, the history of Watford FC, and trying my best to set them up to live happy, healthy lives. They are the reason why I write books, why I blog and why I tie autobiographical stories to...

On a podcast I listened to a few months ago I heard a line that struck a chord: People connect with stories they see themselves in. That’s handy, I thought. I’ve got a few stories, a lot of them about things that other people might see themselves in. They’re often...