I've already written a post about my ill-fated trip to the North to watch Watford play at Chesterfield, a day that would've been dramatically different had mobile phones been around then. Now they're here and everything's changed. I reckon it's worth kids in Britain...

I'd dropped Mischa off at school and was sitting in rush-hour traffic on my way home, listening to Shaun Keaveny on 6 Music. It was Shaun's last day hosting the breakfast show and I heard loads of people's messages packed to the gills with sadness and great humour,...

In my best Frank Spencer voice, I've had a bit o' trouble. Not too much, you'll be delighted to hear, but just enough to get under my skin. You see, I get slightly irate when huge, greedy organisations sap my time and energy as I try to deal with their customer...

When Amazon decides to enter an industry, prepare for change. Everyone knows they changed the book publishing industry (and they're changing it again, as Audible, one of their brands, has facilitated huge growth in the sale of audio books). Most people know they're...

This post could be about needing more online storage and the arguably even more boring topic of the need to backup work in case it disappears for whatever reason. But given the sad death of Keith Flint today I won't write about those things now. The Prodigy made a...

If you run a website, it's worth remembering that people make up their mind about a webpage within a few brief seconds of landing on it. They ask: "Am I in the right place?" "Is this for me?" "What's in it for me?" Web copy often begins with benefits and follows with...

When I hear Green Onions I think of the worst sandwich I've ever eaten. It was back in my student days when disposable income was, shall we say, a little on the low side. So low, in fact, that when I was hungry one day, and looked in the fridge for something to eat,...

There's a lot to be said for 'free writing', the idea of putting pen to paper or finger to keyboard continuously for a set period of time without worrying about any of these: Spelling Grammar Topic Where or how you might use what you produce, if at all Who might end...

Sometimes the best way to learn something is to simply jump in, get started, make mistakes, then correct them and try again. In other words, "Ready, fire, aim." Go in blind and feel your way through. And I've found it helps you if you help someone else to do the same...

I started to organise the book yesterday: I thought about the a message, idea, or story that I want to share Gathered much of the information I already have that's ready and waiting Organised my material in a Word doc On that first point, thinking about the message,...