Diary of a Network Geek

I thought I’d try something new this year; early preparation.

To be clear, though, I’m not going to attempt NaNoWrimo this year, because I’m way too busy right now. However, in previous years, I would often post things to help people who were doing NaNoWriMo during the month of November, when the event occurs and this year, I thought I’d start early to let anyone who was writing get their prep out of the way. So, here in the earliest stages of planning, you hopefully have an idea what you may want to write and, while you’ve been thinking about it for weeks or months, maybe you haven’t captured those thoughts. In the past, I’ve used dozens of notebooks of every shape, size and description to scribble down every stray thought I may have had about whatever project I had in mind. The only problem is, I could never seem to get the ideas all gathered together and into a useful format. That’s where Evernote came in.
I started using Evernote because of the Getting Things Done method for staying organized. It’s a great system and, naturally, it gave me a way to collect all my ideas so I had easy access to them and one tool that people used in the GTD system was, Evernote. (For some more details on that, and a great introduction to the GTD system, check out David Allen’s setup document for Evernote. It’s well worth the $10!)
Once you’ve checked out Evernote, then go read their article Prepare for NaNoWriMo with Evernote. It’s got some great ideas for how to capture your story and character ideas via Evernote, which you can then reference on your writing computer or your smart phone. It’s pretty awesome!
And, if that wasn’t enough, they even have some great creative writing templates you can integrate into your personal creative writing notebook.

Trust me, it’s never to early to start planning and you will not regret using Evernote once you start!
So, let’s gear up for a month’s worth of creative writing resources in preparation for National Novel Writing Month!

This post originally appeared on the Fantasist’s Scroll.

I can’t believe I didn’t include this last week.

Okay, so this may be a little boring for people who aren’t thinking about creating videos or setting their home movies to music, but, boring people with this blog has never stopped me from sharing something before, so I won’t let it now.  This free and mostly unrestricted resource requires a Google account of some kind to access, but I think it’s worth setting up a Gmail account to get to this amazing collection of audio.  It’s the free, YouTube Audio Library.  Notice, though, that I called it an audio library, not a music library.  That’s because half of this is music, much of which you can use without restriction.  But, the other half of it is a collection of relatively high-quality sound effects.  Now, I wouldn’t want to make a whole movie with this library, but, conceivably you could.  This has everything from music for every kind of emotion and scene, but also pretty much every generic sound effect you could ask for, from bullets to kids to Summer nights to pocket change hitting a wood table.
As free audio libraries go, it’s pretty complete.

Also, it’s been kind of a long week and y’all are lucky to be getting anything at all from this blog this Friday.  Maybe next week will be better.  Maybe not.

This post originally appeared on Use Your Words.

Or, more specifically, music for your projects.

Clearly, I’m not talking about a manufacturing project here, but, rather, music for your creative project.
Maybe you have a dream project that you’ve filmed on your iPhone and want to add some cool background music to your creation before uploading it to YouTube.  Or, maybe you need a little musical intro for the background of your podcast credits.  Or, something cool to add ambiance to your artisanal website.  Whatever you need, Music for Makers probably has you covered.  You can sign up for free and get limited numbers of tracks, sent to you one at a time on a daily basis.  Or you can pay and get more access. Just remember, you can use their music in as many personal and commercial projects as you like without paying royalties or including attribution, but you can not sell or redistribute that music in its original form.

If, however, you really just want some background noise to distract you from the hum of the fluorescent lights above your cubicle, try the free Zenmix, instead.  With this webpage, you can mix together various looped ambient sounds, like a waterfall or birdsong or rain, to create your own custom blend of white noise distraction from the terrible sounds your co-worker’s lower intestine is making after lunch.  Or whatever you may need a distraction from.  (And, all the tracks on Zenmix are from Music for Makers, which gives you an idea of what you can do with those tracks.)

So, there you go, that’s two free things for you this Friday.  Enjoy!

This post originally appeared at Use Your Words.

Hmm, who doesn’t love sammiches?

Seriously, sandwiches are the best.
I particularly like peanut butter sandwiches, though my wife thinks the things I combine with peanut butter are mildly insane.  Frankly, I think if she would just try the peanut butter and sweet relish sandwich, she’d see just how sweet and savory combine to make something totally delicious!  Though, I completely understand her aversion to my much more experimental peanut butter with bleu cheese slices on pumpernickel.  It’s pretty fantastic, but not for the faint of heart or the peanut butter sandwich neophyte.  It’s pretty advanced sandwichery.
On the other hand, it’s not like I’m the first guy to make some wild combinations of flavors in a sandwich.  It’s been a pretty radical idea from the very start, but I think we’ve lost some of the art of sandwiching with our modern conventions surrounding food.  So, this week, I’m sharing a link to a public domain book from 1909 on the art of the sandwich; The Up-To-Date Sandwich Book: 400 Ways to Make a Sandwich.  It’s brought to you via the Public Domain Review and, while you can read it online, you can download the complete PDF for your own sandwich experiments.  There are some great ones in there.  I can’t say that the “Texas Sandwich” sounds all that traditionally Texas to me, or like something I’m eager to try, but the “Tip-Top Sandwich” just a few pages later sounds like a delicious culinary adventure.  And, “Peanut Sandwich No. 4” sounds quite interesting, if not exactly a part of any diet I’ve ever heard of.

How about you?  Have a favorite?  Or is there one from the book that sounds like something you’d try?
The weekend is about to start and the comments are open!

This post originally appeared on Use Your Words.

No, I’m not talking about building the skills that go on resumes, but the resume itself.

For reasons that are best left unexplored, I’ve been thinking about resumes lately.  Specifically, writing them and formatting them.  It’s a chore.  And, it’s hard to do well, frankly.  For example, I’ve been using the same basic resume format since I made my first resume almost thirty years ago.  Granted, I’ve moved some things around and dropped some of the earliest jobs, especially those that don’t relate to my current field, but the basic resume hasn’t changed.  I’ve started to wonder if that works against me, making me look antiquated and out-of-date.
So, I nosed around a bit and found two resume-building tools that might help me reformat all that, and, of course, I’m sharing them with you so you can get the advantage of my research.  Besides, let’s be honest, it’s about time to update your resume any way, isn’t it?

Well, no matter how you feel about your resume, here are the tools.
First, there’s Standard Resume.  It’s a free web-based app, but it does require a login which collects your email.  The interface is pretty simple and about like every other job search or resume related form you’ve ever filled out.  What’s nice about it, though, is that when you’re done you’ll have printable PDF copies of your resume, a web-based version which you can link to from a webpage or email to an interested party, and they even make the web-based version mobile friendly for viewing on the go.  For free, that’s pretty impressive.  I’m not sure how they’re paying for all this, so I’d expect they’ll be either advertising to you directly or selling your information to someone.  Still, it might be worth it for the super nice looking resume that’s consistent across print, web and mobile.
The other tool is Creddle, which is similar to Standard Resume, but with some important differences.  For example, while Creddle used to have a direct import from LinkedIn that no longer works due to changes in the LinkedIn backend, they can still take your exported LinkedIn resume in PDF form and import that information, saving you the hassle of retyping it.  The interface is a little more challenging, also, but gives you much greater control over your finished product.  Creddle also adds cover letters to the mix, to help you get started with that as well.  Frankly, I find the prospect of writing cover letters almost as daunting as trying to sum up my entire career in two pages or less, so that’s real added value to me!  Finally, just like Standard Resume, Creddle requires an email to set up an account and will also give you a link to a easily sharable webpage of your resume.

So, there you have it, two helpful resume building and formatting tools just in time for a long weekend of revamping your work life.
I hope they help!

This post originally appeared at Use Your Words.