Month: February 2013

Struggling to write

9 Replies Christopher Roberts

When most authors are struggling to writer, [ironically] they often write a post about what to do when you get ‘writer’s block’, hoping it will kick-start their writing back into gear.

I am struggling to write, as you may have noticed from the sparsity of posts this month – this is only post 9, and we are already 25 days into February.

Ideas lightbulbThe typical ‘writer’s block post’ will contain thoughts and ideas on how to stimulate that fantastical, creative chunk of your brain that is responsible for your ideas and your best works.

My problem isn’t that that part of my brain is taking a nap, quite the reverse: its in overdrive!

Many bloggers give the famous advice “find your niche and stick to it”. I like to defy the trend though, and we are a different sort of blog, hence we can take a different sort of approach to blogging. As a writer for Technology Bloggers, you are literally spoilt for choice when it comes to what to write about. You could research innovating new technologies, explore how the internet is changing our lives, educate on the world of SEO, discuss blogging practices – you get the picture, we aren’t just technology!

With so many topics, how do you choose what to write about? Do I aim to help you with a ‘how to guide’, wow you with a ‘facts and stats’ post, inform you with my take on a breaking news article, teach you how something works, what do I do?

You have no idea how many posts I have started to write, saved as a draft and then abandoned because something more interesting has sprung to mind.

I am going to focus. You can expect more. A few weeks ago I wrote about what I perceived to be the the blogging dilemma: quality vs quantity, and you should have taken from that post that I will only ever post stuff that I think you (or someone else) will want to read, and stuff which I believe is ‘quality’.

Enough said. Now to get writing proper posts.

Your Input

On a final note, do you have any suggestions/requests? Is there anything you want me to explore? I will gladly take ideas for posts. I won’t always run with them, but if I like the idea, I shall try.

Anything unclear about how we run things, or what you can expect?

Have faith, we shall battle on!

P.P.S

On a [final] final note, do you think my writing is getting too casual and informal?

I notice I am changing the way I write, and part of me likes the change, but another part is anxious that I may loose my credibility. You know me right?

Anyhow this is blogging, not literature!

P.P.P.S

The above ‘P.P.S‘ was going in another post, but I thought it fitted in here better 🙂

Asteroid Hunting

3 Replies Jonny Hankins

Many of you will have seen the video of the meteor that exploded into the atmosphere above Russia last week, and I would just like to offer an overview of the event from a practical scientific prespective.

The meteor was about 15 metres across, and as such too small to detect. As we all saw though a meteor of this size can do extensive damage. It weighed about 7000 metric tonnes, travelling at 18 Km per second and exploded at a height of between 15 and 20 Km. This is pretty close to the ground if you think that an aeroplane flies at about 10Km and we are certainly not dealing with somewhere where nothing happens.

The force of the explosion was about 30 times that of the Hiroshima bomb, a pretty devastating blow by all counts. We should think ourselves lucky that it did not happen over a major city.

Trees blown over after the 1908 impact

Trees blown over after the 1908 meteor impact

In 1908 in Tunguska also in Russia a much larger meteor hit. This one was about the size of the DA14 meteor that flew past Earth later on the same day last week, and it blew trees down over an area of about 2000 square Km. Once again it hit over Siberia so less damage than could have occurred, but if you think that the event of last week over Russia only threw out about 5% of the force of this one than we don’t need much imagination to envisage the possible catastrophe. Several photos are available around the net and I offer one above. There are also plenty of huge craters to see.

NASA have the Near Earth Program, and they have the mission of monitoring the many things that fly close to Earth.

It is not an easy job though as you might imagine, they use ground based telescopes so can only see something that is big enough to reflect enough light, and last week’s hit came directly in line with the sun, so practically impossible to see.

NASA has managed to identify 90% of near Earth asteroids that are more than 1 Km across, and something of this size might threaten life on Earth itself if it hit. There are more than a million near Earth asteroids however that are 20 metres across or more but  very few of these have been identified and mapped.

The B612 Project is hoping to put a telescope into Space before 2018 that will be able to spot something of that size, but until then they will go largely unseen.

Keeping on a related topic last May I put a post up about asteroid mining, and recently the BBC has carried some updates on this project.

It is currently a 2 horse race, but it seems very speculative. And I remember a song about horses of this type.

One blog, two perspectives

Leave a reply Christopher Roberts

Technology Bloggers has two types of community members, those who read and those who write – some people do both.

For a long time now, those who contribute articles to the blog, and those who read those contributions, have seen the blog in the same way.

Not anymore.

Thanks to a clever bit of coding and a plugin or two, logged in users, now see a different blog to those who are logged out.

One of the major differences is advertisements. As you know we sometimes host advertisements on the sidebar or in the footer of the blog, in order to help fund the maintenance of the blog – someone has to pay the bills!

Logged in users still see sponsored editorials and writers personal AdSense units, however they no longer see sidebar/footer promotions. Also, logged in users get ‘behind the scenes’ information an updates that normal users don’t need to see.

For an example, see the image below.

Logged in vs standard users footer view

What Technology Bloggers homepage footer currently looks like for normal readers and logged in users.

For search engine optimisation reasons, I have been trying to remove links from the blog’s design (specifically sidebar and footer) as too many links can look spammy, and throw PageRank in all directions. Fewer links means those pages that are linked to (both internal and external) carry greater authority.

So, if you are a writer, check out your sidebar and footer, as it is different to when you are not logged in. Even if you don’t have an account, take a look at the sidebar and footer, as there is some really interesting stuff which you might find useful there!

On a slightly different note, our prodigy (well he did win the 2012 ‘Rising Star’ community award) Jonny Hankins is currently learning more about our commenting systems, via Technology Bloggers Progression Academy – a new initiative I am developing – with the aim to have him modifying comments, and therefore being promoted to the status of Editor (Level 1), in the very near future.

Hopefully we can get more writers moderating their own comments too soon. Technology Bloggers Progression Academy material is currently being tested on our guinea pig – also Mr Hankins!