Thord D. Hedengren

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  • Revising The Casbah

    I have a deadline. It is a mere week away, and I’m not done yet. That’s no biggie, you might think, but I’m editing this book you see, the manuscript for the fourth edition of Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog (and yeah, I guess I’m announcing that right here, right now), and I’m not done yet. I’d like to tell you that I’m not even close but that would scare my publishes and stop you from shelling out the $30 or whatever for a copy, and then I can’t pay my mortgage or support my drinking habits, so I won’t.

    I will tell you this though: Second, Third, Fourth, Xth editions are hard work. You’d think it would be easy to keep a winning concept rolling, to fix the code and change the examples and then wham bam thank you money-sending lady at the publisher’s office.

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  • Your Own Writing Place

    No doubt you’ve read posts, interviews and articles where writers talk about the importance of your own writing place. The writer’s sanctuary can be just about anything, a place under the stairs, a converted cupboard, your home office, or a lavish castle draped in vines with a moat keeping the mob at bay. It really doesn’t matter, the know it all’s will tell you, as the important thing is that you have a place where you can write.

    And you know what, they’re right.

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  • Deadlines

    When you commit to a deadline as a writer, stick to it. Forget about the notion of writers waiting for the magical muse, forget about writer’s block, and forget about people being patient with you because you’re creating art. Every time you miss a deadline, you’re being unfair to someone. It might just be you, or it might be a team of editors, designers, marketers, and so on.

    “But I’m the star, they’ll have to wait!”

    No, they don’t have to wait. You’re not indispensable, and besides, do you feel the same when the mechanic isn’t finishing work on your car on time, or you have to wait a whole day for a plumber who doesn’t show?

    Or as I like to put it: Editors are people too.

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  • Hello, Says The Writer

    Folks, I’m what you call a writer. I write words that stumble upon each other, form sentences, paragraphs, articles, books, lyrics, and the occasional obscenity. Come to think of it, most of these forms of expressing myself in the written form are related to obscenity in some fashion. I guess that’s just who I am, or rather what society demands of me should I want my ego to be appropriately stroked on a semi-daily basis.

    That lousy worm, the part of me that writes words like these, that nasty little bugger, he craves further attention. He almost wants to blog again, although he still maintains the healthy loathing for the word, the so called profession, and the lifestyle of the blogger. In fact, that dark little devil is very close to deleting this very site every now and then, although he usually passes out before committing said crime against humanity, not to mention the bank account.

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  • Breaking News

    Flipping through my RSS feed I was once again reminded that being first isn’t always the key to success. In this case it was web publishing, and Boing Boing in particular. The blog had just run a post about how Darth Vader tackled the Hoth battle in The Empire Strikes Back, originally a Wired story. I had seen the story being mentioned at least a dozen times already, over a 24 hour (or something like that) period of time.

    In conclusion, Boing Boing was late on the ball, which you might think was embarrassing considering this is a pretty typical Boing Boing story.

    The thing is, it doesn’t matter.

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  • Chasing Dreams

    It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, you need to know when it is time to stop doing it. You might be writing a book, publish a site, or chase some other dream – everything has to have its limits.

    I know, that hurts. You dream about doing something, being someone, achieving greatness, and here I am telling you that you shouldn’t chase that dream forever.

    Not all of us can be rockstars, no matter how much we want to. We can, and should, try though.

    You shouldn’t give up easily either, never that, but when you set out to do something, to achieve a goal, then you need to know when enough is enough.

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  • Taking It Easy Is Hard

    I’ve been home sick since Friday last week, not being able to speak due to throat issues, with a dash of fever and a spot of mucous to go with that. The week before that started with me getting back from another stint of some sort of hyper flu, hyper being a time element in this case. It would seem I got back to work too early, pushing myself too hard, since I got sick again so quickly. I usually don’t get sick.

    Despite not usually being susceptible to whatever flu that’s bothering Stockholm at the moment, I’m not of the habit of working myself towards illness. I did in the past, to an excessive degree one might say, and learned my lesson. Still, there are times when taking it easy is hard.

    Let me rephrase that: Taking it easy is always hard, but sometimes it is really hard.

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  • Gå på WP-Kafé #wpse

    Stockholm har förärats med ett nytt WordPress-event, nämligen WP-Kafé som kommer inträffa ett par gånger under våren. Jag pratar på det är sjuk så missar tyvärr den första, den 11 februari.

  • The Problem With Infinite Scroll

    Infinite scroll is becoming more and more common these days. You’ve no doubt seen it: When you think you’re about to reach the bottom of the page it automagically adds a new set of items thus prolonging the page without you ever seeing the end of it. As you keep scrolling downwards, the site does this over and over again, preventing the page to ever end.

    I hate that.

    OK, so I don’t actually hate that, but I do think it is an overused technique that breaks the design of most sites.

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  • Du behöver inte WyWallet

    Det här kom i dag per SMS:

    Hej. Du har väl inte missat att SMS-köp och andra mobila betalningar efter 31 jan kommer att skötas av WyWallet, en betalningstjänst vi startat tillsammans med Telia, Tele 2 och Telenor. Skicka “JA” till 71798 så kan du fortsätta att betala dina SMS-köp via din mobilfaktura. Gör du ingenting kommer du att bli uppmanad att registrera dig nästa gång du försöker göra ett SMS-köp. Flera av landets kollektivtrafikbolag har valt egna biljettlösningar. Vänd dig därför till ditt lokala kollektivtrafikbolag för information om hur du löser biljett efter 31 januari. Läs villkor på http://wywallet.se/villkor och läs mer om WyWallet på http://m.tre.se/wywallet Mvh 3

    Innan du accepterar WyWallet och deras horribla villkor, vilka diskuterats ingående tidigare, så ifrågasätt ifall du behöver dem. Stockholmare som vill köpa SL-biljetter med SMS gör det med en annan aktör så ni kan skippa WyWallet för det ändamålet, och så är fallet på andra platser i landet med. Svidande kritik mot WyWallet och mobiloperatörernas agerande om något.

    Själv vägrar jag godkänna WyWallets villkor, inte minst för att hela företaget bakom är ett hån mot fri konkurrens eftersom de fyra mobiloperatörerna är ägare. Bojkotta WyWallet du med, sök alternativ, och visa att det här inte är i kundernas intresse. Med lite tur läggs spektaklet ned och mobiloperatörerna inser att transparens och tydlighet mot kunderna är något alla tjänar på.

  • Allt är inte bra nog för att publiceras

    Just nu pågår #blogg100, en utmaning startad av Fredrik Wass med över 500 bloggar som deltar. Utmaningen består i att skriva en bloggpost om dagen i 100 dagar, och hyllningskören låter inte vänta på sig. Dels för att det är ett kul tilltag, och dels för att Wass – liksom många andra (jag inräknad) – har sina cheerleaders som hejar på. Inget ont om det, så fungerar det helt enkelt.

    Själv deltar jag inte, eftersom #blogg100 är tänkt som en utmaning, och en bloggpost om dagen är inte en utmaning för mig. Jag jobbar med att skriva, bland annat, och även om jag planerar mitt skrivande så är snittet långt över en post dagligen. Så är det inte för alla, de flesta prioriterar bort sina bloggar till förmån för annat som upplevs viktigare och mer akut. #livet, som det hade hashtaggats på Twitter, tar plats och för de allra flesta är bloggen ett sidoprojekt. Inget konstigt med det heller.

    En utmaning som #blogg100 kan ändra på det, precis som NaNoWriMo. I bästa fall ger det en vana att skriva dagligen, vilket är bra. Bra skribenter, oavsett om de är författare, journalister, bloggare eller kolumnister, skriver så gott som dagligen. Att skriva är ett hantverk, det behöver utövas, och vem som helst kan lära sig att skriva.

    Det betyder inte att allt som skrivs bör publiceras.

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  • What The iPad Mini Won't Do

    I’m a happy iPad mini owner. I swapped out my iPad 3 for a mini with cellular. Yes, the screen is a lot worse compared to the retina iPads, but you don’t have them next to one another do you? Yes, the processor is a step down, but other than a few laggy games that doesn’t bother me much. And yes, it is light and sexy and I totally get the reasoning that this is the iPad as it was supposed to be.

    Except that it is not. It is an option, treat it as such, for now.

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  • Write What You Know

    There are two types of teachers of writing (is that a thing?) out there. One will give you the advice “write what you know”, and the other will go to great lengths explaining why that advice is bollocks.

    The idea behind “write what you know” is that most you will be better at telling a compelling story if you stick to things you have a notion of. Problem is, if you’re a clerk at the postal office, your life probably isn’t full of excitement and the market for novels about postcards gone astray is fairly limited.

    “Hang on there! Postal workers have a life outside of work you know! Stupid Swedish bastard…”

    Yeah, of course they do, just like everyone else. I bet it is just as bland, predictable and boring to everyone not being a part of it as just about any life on this Earth is. Except mine of course, my daily routine could fill countless of volumes consisting of epic tales of great adventure.

    What? No? Meh, what do you know…

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  • WordPress Meetup i Norrköping #wpse

    Den 26 april är det WordPress Meetup i Norrköping, arrangerat av Angry Creative. Jag kommer dit och pratar om något spännande. Anmäl dig här!

  • Här är The Writer’s iPad

    The Writer's iPadJag har skrivit en ebok som heter The Writer’s iPad. Den handlar om hur man som författare, skribent, journalist, ordkonstnär, poet, eller vad man nu vill kalla sig, kan använda sin iPad för att producera ännu fler ord. Läs mer om The Writer’s iPad här.

    Eboken kommer i slutet av februari och/eller i början av mars, beroende på vilket format och vilken ebokhandel du föredrar. Naturligtvis återkommer jag med mer information när det närmar sig.