Blog Posts

  • Enjoy Your Sunday Evening

    Enjoy Your Sunday Evening

    You’re a teacher: it’s Sunday evening and you can’t relax as you have work tomorrow. Why is that? Partly it’s stage fright. Those outside the…

  • Eyes Wide Open

    Eyes Wide Open

    I saw this statue of Justice on a recent holiday. She was standing outside the Palácio da Justiça in Porto.  The guide on our walking tour…

  • The Golden Age of Science Writing

    The Golden Age of Science Writing

    Following on from A Visit to the Zeppelin Museum… There is a charge often levelled at the technically inclined that they can’t write. Reading the…

  • What we want them to be

    What we want them to be

    I was travelling on a tram through Manchester during the recent heatwave. Two young women of about the same age were standing by the doors.…

  • A Visit to The Zeppelin Museum

    A Visit to The Zeppelin Museum

    (This article was first posted in 2011 – I’ve reposted it following something I heard this week on the radio…) Over the summer I visited…

  • Hands off that Mouse!

    Hands off that Mouse!

    Four keyboard shortcuts you shouldn’t be without (and one Evernote really should implement…) Want to know the easiest way to improve your productivity? Stop using…

  • Eddie Stobart: Trucks & Trailers

    Eddie Stobart: Trucks & Trailers

    As it says on Wikipedia: Eddie Stobart: Trucks & Trailers is a documentary television programme series exploring the world of the Eddie Stobart haulage company. My…

  • Picture this:

    Picture this:

    There’s a post that occasionally does the rounds on the internet challenging beginner writers to describe a woman in a picture. The woman in question…

  • Enjoy the Ride

    Enjoy the Ride

    A friend of mine – he reads this blog so he’ll know this post is partly about him – always wanted to play the guitar. When…

  • What if the Bad Guys Read Books Too?

    What if the Bad Guys Read Books Too?

    Like many people, I imagine, I’ve been thinking of the Handmaid’s Tale over the past week. I think its fair to say that most people…

  • And then they start flying…

    And then they start flying…

    One of the signs that a story has jumped the shark is when characters who previously couldn’t do so suddenly gain the ability to fly. …

  • Getting Around in Doom Emacs

    The following post is part of my new Emacs Writing Setup. You can find the complete setup here on GitHub: https://github.com/ballantony/emacs-writing A big part of…