Blog Archive for 07/2006

 

I made a suggestion in my tutorial-writing guide that keeping a submissions diary (a list of directories that you have submitted to) is essential when submitting tutorials to directories. Since I've mainly been working on Photoshop tutorials recently I've gathered a number of useful sites that accept Photoshop tutorials.

You can view the list here in my tutorial (if you can call it that), Where to Submit your Photoshop Tutorials. If you have anything to add to the list then please get in touch through the contact form on this site.

More directories of directories coming soon . . . next . . . PHP! Stay tuned.

I've had a bit of experience in writing tutorials of late and noticed while searching around there are very few good guides to help those that are new to tutorial writing. I've prepared an article that details ten way to write more popular online tutorials. Some of the points are obvious, some aren't. Still, it's amazing how many people miss the obvious ones.

You can read the article here. I recommend that if you still have your ears wet in the world of tutorial writing, no matter what kind of tutorials you are writing, you give it a read.

I was looking through my log files last night and I found a few hits from a site I had never seen before. Out of curiosity I looked at the site and found out some charleton had copied my Curved Metal Tutorial for Photoshop word-for-word onto a forum! He even had the audacity to link to the images on my site!

I was furious so I contacted the moderators who removed the thread. It made me realise though that I had not set Apache to prevent this (stealing images in this way is known as hotlinking) from happening.

Hotlink prevention means you tell the Apache webserver to check the domain of every image request. You specify one or more safe domains - if the domain is not regarded as safe Apache serves a different image (one telling them to stop stealing!). Preventing hotlinking stops frauds stealing your bandwidth and content.

If you need to do likewise I've added some example code here.

I love my steaks and last night I had one of the best steaks I've ever had.

The place was Fat Francos on New Road Side in Horsforth, Leeds. It's just a stone's throw from where I live and serves great Italian food: pasta, pizza, steaks and a great range of seafood specials.

The steak was a fantastic cut of chargrilled Sirloin coated in garlic butter and served with mushroom and tomatoes. I like my steaks rare and for the first time I ordered it blue rare. When it came it was more like the usual rare I have; it didn't matter though - the steak was delicious. It oozed with flavour and juices - I highly recommend it!

Take a close look at the dish here.

Visit the Fat Francos website here.

If I like something be it on radio, CD, online or DVD I like to listen to / watch it a lot. Time after time a truly good whodunnit or a cleverly scripted comedy will continue to keep me entertained.

At the begining of the year I found a link to the Guardian Unlimited website that had some podcasts available for free download under the name of "The Ricky Gervais Show". I swiftly downloaded the latest episodes as I was a huge fan of The Office (penned by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant) and I also had loved what I'd seen of the show's producer Karl Pilkington from an extra features on one of Ricky's DVDs.

It turns out Karl is a comic legend! I listened to the podcasts again and again . . . and AGAIN!

I've now discovered lots more Karl Pilkington goodies in the way of another podcast series and an archive of several series from XFM which hardcore Gervais / Merchant / Pilkington fans will be familiar with.

I was so impressed with the quality and longevity of the shows I've written an article on Karl as I truly believe him to be one of the funniest people around at the moment!

Read the article here.

Get series 1 and 2 of the podcasts from here. (You have to pay for podcasts - they are no longer free but they are bery good value)

Listen to the XFM archives here.

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