Some time ago a writing friend recommended The Inkwell Group as writing website worth checking out. He was right http://www.Inkwellwriters.ie is a very good resource for both the published writer and the aspiring writer. I’m particularly interested in Ebook publishing as this is fast becoming the medium through which many books are published. You’ll enjoy reading the information on the Inkwell Writers website.
Tonight I decoded to update the appearance of my WordPress blog. I chose the theme ‘Manifest‘ because it does exactly what it’s creator intended:
Manifest is a clean and streamlined theme, with great care for typography, that focuses on the content and not the distractions. It comes with support for several post formats, including image, link, and aside, with the option of adding a subtle header image to bring a personal touch to the design.
The Gravatar photo is from:
http://www.123rf.com/photo_6204162_a-hiker-writing-in-a-journal-at-the-summit-of-a-mountain.html
The plan is that cosmetic changes such as this will encourage more regular blogging.
Denis Nolan was a clock maker who loved his work and also did an enormous amount of good for people. His company was called Precision Clocks of Dublin. I first met Denis through a mutual friend in Drumcondra. He encouraged me to take up hill walking. It was through Denis that I go acquainted with three other people who would in time become good friends. About once a month we would meet up for some hillwalking in beautiful County Wicklow. Those walks were terrific mainly because our little group would discuss many topics as we enjoyed the majestic scenery. Yes we all have fond memories of Denis as he loved to explain everything to do with clocks. Whenever our group goes hillwalking in county Wicklow we will remember Denis with great affection.
Denis Nolan passed away on Wednesday 24th August 2011 at his home in Drumcondra, Dublin, Ireland. His funeral mass took place at the Church of Our Lady of Victories in Ballymun on Saturday 27th August 2011. He was still young and had many years of life, work and play remaining. Sadly this was not to be.
Whenever you see a nice clock on a church or indeed any public building take a closer look, if there is no name then the clock was designed, built and installed by Denis Nolan.
May he rest in peace. Amen.
Last night there was an extremely interesting radio programme on the BBC World Service about Russian computer hackers who are considered the best in the world. Here is a direct transcript from the BBC website.
Andrei is a young man with immense power at his fingertips. He’s a reformed Russian hacker.
Back hunched, eyes fixed on the computer screen in front of him, he demonstrates what he can do.
“Look, here’s the log-in and the password,” he says, pulling up a Georgian government website.
“This site has already been hacked, I’m just demonstrating the vulnerability. But it’s easy if you know how.”
At just 20 years old, Andrei works for an information security firm. He says he does nothing illegal now, but he used to.
“I started when I was 14. I hacked a series of military resources, the US army, some Russian departments. I wanted to examine how well protected they were.”
Andrei sees nothing wrong with what he did, as he made no money from it. Hacking for him is all about the technical challenge and the thrill.
“It’s like when you have a maths problem,” he says. “You don’t know what tools to use, you know nothing. But you want to master it, understand it, and then use that knowledge in the future.”
Technical skill
Andrei is not alone in his passion. Yevgeny Kaspersky describes Russia as a nation of “super hackers” and he should know.
Mr Kaspersky has made his name battling the world’s cyber criminals. The computer security guru says hackers in China and Latin America generate the greatest number of cyber-attacks.
The most sophisticated come from his own country.
“Russian attacks look more professional. The malware and design is more complicated and more technical,” Mr Kaspersky says.
“I think it’s thanks to Russia’s technical education. Its graduates are probably the best.”
Four hours flight east of Moscow, the next generation of those graduates is in training.
In the snow-coated Siberian city of Tomsk, one in every five residents is a student. Information security is what they excel in. But in college corridors here, students talk of hacking with respect, even reverence.
“Hacking is an art, the art of breaking-in,” Alexei says. “A true hacker strives to learn something new. It’s the art of constantly achieving new heights of expertise.”
The students don’t learn this art directly in class. Alexei says his institute only “helps him in the right direction”. But there are plenty of opportunities to hone your hacking skills on campus.
One, is when the Sibears do battle.
The cyber-warriors of Tomsk university consistently finish among the top three teams in international information protection contests. They train each week, hunting for flaws in each others cyber defences.
“I’ve found lots of flags! It was a successful attack,” Zheniya whoops as he identifies a weak spot in his opponent’s system. “Now I can get access to their database,” he grins and prepares to swoop.
Cash call
For these Siberian students, hacking is a test of their knowledge and ingenuity. As Zheniya explained, you can’t defend a system unless you understand the principles of attack. But there is another illegal market for their undoubted skills.
The team members say they’ve never been tempted but back in Moscow, Andrei admits that when he started hacking, he was constantly approached and offered money to hire his services.
First, friends and relatives wanted him to break into e-mail accounts, or destroy websites.
Then the demands became more serious.
“There were people who wanted me to infect a large number of users who were clients of a certain bank, so they could use their computers to transfer money,” Andrei remembers, but says he refused. “That’s not ethical.”
For those who are lured by the promise of riches, Russia’s cyber police insist there’s no such thing as anonymity in the internet. The department claims it has uncovered more than 7,000 cybercrimes in the past nine months.
Others fear that’s only scraping the surface in the fight against a crime that knows no international boundaries.
That’s why Mr Kaspersky is arguing for some form of government control of cyberspace.
“We depend on this network now, and we don’t control it,” he says, and suggests the introduction of internet passports for every user. For him, security concerns are more important than preserving full freedom.
That would certainly have complicated life for Andrei once. But he says he’s abandoned criminal hacking now, and makes a living out of internet security services instead.
“It’s still hacking, but because I get paid it gives me more pleasure. It’s better than hacking illegally – and for nothing,” he says.
But he estimates there are at least a hundred serious Russian hackers still at work.
And now a whole new generation of cyber-specialists is working its way through the country’s colleges.
Soon, they too will be faced with a choice: whether to set their minds to creating sophisticated information protection systems, or join the ranks of Russia’s hackers for hire.
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Yevgeny Kaspersky the famous Russian computer / IT guru who has made his name battling the world’s cyber criminals:
http://www.kaspersky.co.uk/kis25orkav30?THRU&reseller=44003
Here are the top 5 websites where you can learn how to hack like a pro:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-5-websites-to-learn-how-to-hack-like-a-pro/
On Monday I listened to a very interesting interview with Will Self on Open Book on BBC Radio 4. He has gone back to doing his writing on a typewriter. Why has he ditched his computer? He says that a writer who uses a computer does his thinking on the screen; whereas a writer who uses a typewriter does his thinking on the page which involves a lot of rewrites therefore a computer is no advantage. I would have to disagree because a computer is indispensable when it comes to editing your writing. He also revealed that his spelling had deteriorated due to using a computer – did he never hear of ‘spell check’? Self’s new novel is called Butt which is set on a bleak island which is reminiscent of the movie ‘Mad Max’. The story is influenced by Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’. His novel, Butt is being published on the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War. He wants people to think more about the moral status of our actions – eg. the consequences of flipping a cigarette butt! He maintains that the war in Iraq did not impact too severely on people’s lives in Britain – people still went
on about their daily lives. Ofcourse people went on as best they could.
What did Will Self expect people to do? Really I find his angle insipid to say the least.
Anyway he the writer is entitled to his opinions. Aren’t we all – writers or not?
This evening I downloaded 2 free programs for Windows XP: VirtuaWin Virtual Desktop Manager for Windows & Sticker Lite (Desktop Notes equivalent to yellow paper sticky notes).
VirtuaWin is a virtual desktop manager for the Windows operating system (Win9x/ME/NT/Win2K/XP/Win2003/Vista). A virtual desktop manager lets you organize applications over several virtual desktops (also called ‘workspaces’). Virtual desktops are very common in Unix/Linux, and once you get accustomed to using them, they become an essential part of a productive workflow. VirtuaWin is designed to be simple to use and be highly configurable.
Click on the following links to download these fantastic free programs:
VirtuaWin The Virtual Desktop Manager = http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/
Sticker Lite = http://www.morun.net/www/products/sticker/lite/sticky-notes-freeware.html
And now to some free programs I promised a friend. He was particularly interested in software which would unzip files (compressed files). 7-Zip comes highly recommended.
7-Zip is a file archiver with a high compression ratio. http://www.7-zip.org/
7-Zip is an free open source file archiver designed originally for Microsoft Windows, and later made available to other computer operating systems. In the form of p7zip, the command-line version of 7-Zip has been ported for use on Unix-like systems such as GNU/Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X as well as AmigaOS. It is also compatible with DOS via either a DOS port, or by using the HX-DOS extender to run the Windows command-line version. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7-Zip
FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface. FileZilla, the free FTP solution. Both a client and a server are available. FileZilla is open source software distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. http://filezilla-project.org/
The FileZilla Wiki is a documentation base aimed at helping those that want to download, install, compile and use the FileZilla Client and FileZilla Server software to transfer files across the Internet.
FileZilla Client is a free, open source FTP client for Windows. It supports FTP, SFTP, and FTPS (FTP over SSL/TLS). The client is available under many platforms, binaries for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X are provided.FileZilla Server is an FTP server supported by the same project. It supports FTP and FTP over SSL/TLS. http://wiki.filezilla-project.org/Main_Page
BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) communications protocol. BitTorrent is a method of distributing large amounts of data widely without the original distributor incurring the entire costs of hardware, hosting, and bandwidth resources. Instead, when data is distributed using the BitTorrent protocol, each recipient supplies pieces of the data to newer recipients, reducing the cost and burden on any given individual source, providing redundancy against system problems, and reducing dependence on the original distributor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_%28protocol%29
Learn what a Wiki is: A wiki is software that allows registered users or anyone to collaboratively create, edit, link, and organize the content of a website, usually for reference material. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. These wiki websites are often also referred to as wikis; for example, Wikipedia is one of the best known wikis.[1] Wikis are used in businesses to provide affordable and effective intranets and for Knowledge Management. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as “the simplest online database that could possibly work”.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
I sincerely hope that this information is of use to people out there in the online world. Good night!
Recently at Macworld 2008 Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the new MacBook Air – the new ultra thin notebook which is currently taking the web and the world by storm. Just try YouTube and you’ll find a plethora of video footage exploring every aspect of the new MacBook Air.
Apple.ie in Ireland are selling the new MacBook Air from a base price of Eur1,699 – great value because this new piece of kit from Apple is perhaps only the beginning of more fantastic hardware and software that has yet to appear. I would urge anyone interested in Apple software to go along and see a demonstration of this magnificent piece of technology. Who knows you might even buy it there and then.
Check out the new MacBook Air on Mac Life (Create, Share, Enjoy) the online version of the magazine of the same name. And for your daily dose of all things Mac click on MacSlash
On the form side of things you have the incredibly useful Mac-Forums (The ultimate Source for Your Mac).
Am I converted I hear you ask. Absolutely! Should have bought a Mac computer years ago.
Ever since a friend introduced me to the music of Bob Dylan I have been conscious of the fact that Dylan has teamed up with numerous musicians to form what was at the time a brilliant example of musical genius. What springs to mind is the time Dylan toured with The Grateful Dead between 1986 and 1987. Naturally it would have been brilliant to be at their concerts but alas I was only a nipper back then and strange as it may seem I wasn’t atuned to Dylan or The Grateful Dead. I did however listen to Mary Black and The Clancy Brothers and what a joy they brought to my young mind. In those years I was studying to get a good result in the Leaving Cert Exam. Well I would probably have been better off listening and absorbing such fine music talent like Dylan, The Dead and The Travelling Wilburys. After all I would have got a proper musical education and who knows I might have moved to the USA years ago and played with some of these iconic musicians.
At this point I’d like to thank Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead and The Travelling Wilburys for a wonderful, magical musical experience. I’d certainly recommend anyone listen to the sublime music that these artists produced in their prime. Thankfully their records are easily accessible and ofcourse the web brings them and that golden musical time period right into your life in the present.
Tonight I tried Xubuntu 7.04 on my HP pc. I ran the OS as a live distro and it works like a dream. I would urge all readers of this blog to try Xubuntu because it is an excellent and fast OS for both old and new computers. Thanks to Linux Format Magazine for providing the latest version of Xubuntu on their montly DVD. I find LXF to be one of the best linux magazines on the market – explore their fantastic website!
GNU Nano is a text editor for Unix and Unix-like systems such as Linux. Recently I saw a reference to Nano in Linux Format Magazine where it was claimed that Nano is becoming a very popular text editor. I wonder why this is so. If anyone has any information about Nano and its increasing popularity please let me know. Thank you kindly.
On Wednesday I signed up for Box.net (online storage software) and Zoho writer (online word, spreadsheet, presentation software, email and much more). I’d certainly recommend these free programmes to you – try them and explore the possibilities!
Here is some appropriate advice from Jerry Seinfeld about self-motivation and particularly to encourage yourself to write every day.
He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”
“Don’t break the chain.” He said again for emphasis.
Over the years I’ve used his technique in many different areas. I’ve used it for exercise, to learn programming, to learn network administration, to build successful websites and build successful businesses.
It works because it isn’t the one-shot pushes that get us where we want to go, it is the consistent daily action that builds extraordinary outcomes. You may have heard “inch by inch any thing’s a cinch.” Inch by inch does work if you can move an inch every day.
Daily action builds habits. It gives you practice and will make you an expert in a short time. If you don’t break the chain, you’ll start to spot opportunities you otherwise wouldn’t. Small improvements accumulate into large improvements rapidly because daily action provides “compounding interest.”
Skipping one day makes it easier to skip the next.
I’ve often said I’d rather have someone who will take action – even if small – every day as opposed to someone who swings hard once or twice a week. Seinfeld understands that daily action yields greater benefits than sitting down and trying to knock out 1000 jokes in one day.
Think for a moment about what action would make the most profound impact on your life if you worked it every day. That is the action I recommend you put on your Seinfeld calendar. Start today and earn your big red X. And from here on out…
Don’t break the chain!
Brad Isaac is a lead software programmer and blogger. You can read his motivational strategies every day on his goal setting blog, Achieve-IT!
Be sure to explore Brad Isaac’s website; you’ll find very inspiring motivational tips and tricks therein. Do I believe this motivation theory? Believe it – I’m going to live my life by it’s simple and basic cardinal rules.
Learning to create websites using Nvu is a must especially if you are hoping to take the web by storm. Just read what the developers have to say:
I’m going to give Nvu a try and with a little hard work I’ll be heading the page listings! So watch this little white space.
For anyone who wants to try Linux then I have no hesitation in recommending this terrific down load site: MadTux.org
All the best Linux distros are here! So happy Linux to one and all!
The following poems are from Umberto Fiori’s volume of poetry entitled Translations.
Stop
There’s a middle zone
after the curve of the road-bridge,
a dead point
between a shop window full of lamps
and a field where weeds and brambles
heavy with shoots
creep towards the dust.
It’s there that, one day of our lives,
buses take us.
I don’t why the following poem Stylite reminds me of the English actor Jeremy Irons; maybe it has something to do with imagery of the sea and the jellyfish (Irons lives in a castle near Kinsale in County Cork). He is a fine actor and like Ralph Fiennes, another brilliant English actor and a truly outstanding performer on the stage or theatre. But I would have to say that Jeremy Irons is my favourite English actor because he is simply a brilliant performer.
Stylite
It was like swimming
in the open sea, and being caught
suddenly, in a shoal of jellyfish.
With the fury of a saint,
a hermit,
who from the top of his pillar in the desert,
shouts out his visions,
his prayers,
I thanked them, I wished them good evening,
I begged their pardon.
On the Street
If at the corner and old lady
– or, say, a policeman –
turns,
face sculpted by the light
of a beautiful day,
and speaks to me,
just to me, here,
about how there’s no respect,
or how hot it is,
I feel weak, like a saint
brushed by eternity,
I feel plants grow, I feel the earth turn.
Everything seems clear and strong to me,
everything has yet to happen.
The poem entitled Boss evokes memories of one or two ‘bosses’ I have had the good fortune or otherwise to meet during my working life. Perhaps poetry and it’s magnificent power to influence and impress are akin to drinking fine wine or finding something in life that really impresses you.
Boss
When you hear somebody shouting in the street
– Hey, Boss! – and you turn, and realise
it’s you they want,
you feel greatly honoured
to be there: a passer-by,
an able man, who can lend a hand
and then sit down to eat, maybe
in a restaurant, biting a piece of bread
and remembering that moon-world
where no-one was anything.
Making A Writer Out of You
To become both a published and hence ‘successful writer’ you need to develop organisational and personal qualities such as self-discipline and perseverance. This advice applies just as much to the part-time writer as it does to the full-time professional.
In a nutshell: Successful writers do not lounge around waiting for inspiration. They sit with pen, pc or laptop and they start writing. They write regularly because they have disciplined themselves to do so, and because they want to. Try to write everyday, even if only for a few minutes. This can be notes for future reference, a synopsis for an article, the plot of a story or simply letters to friends or relatives. This regular writing helps to keep the mind fresh, active and creative. Many writers find keeping a diary very helpful for this and it can have the added advantage of being a rich source of writing ideas when you look back through it.
The following key writing points are taken from The Writers Bureau Creative Writing Course, Manchester, England, 2000, Book 1 (p28-29). I began this writing course that same year (2000) and have been drifting in and out of it ever since. I feel I have to say that the advice given by the Writers Bureau is perfectly rational and sound writerly advice. It does require discipline and commitment to put their advice into practice and for most people this can be the sticking point. However, all aspiring writers have to grit their teeth and get on with the job of writing; the reward is enjoyment (hopefully) and the immense satisfaction of seeing your words in print and obviously a good financial return for your efforts.
Key Points to Remember
Endnote: check out the links on The Writers Bureau homepage Resources for writers. E-zee Writer and Freelance Market News are particularly informative and useful for developing your writing craft.
Umberto Fiori is an Italian poet who was born in Sarzana in 1949; today he lives in Milan. He has published four collections of poems. You will find his volumes of poetry in Books Upstairs – an eclectic book shop located on College Green, (south of the River Liffey) in Dublin city. A very good friend of mine has just leant me Terminus by Umberto Fiori. It is a typical slim volume of twenty poems which have been translated from Italian. The book was published in 1998 by Poetry Ireland (Dublin) and The Tyrone Guthrie Centre (Annaghmakerrig, County Monaghan).
The poem Terminus is a lovely poem because it depicts a scene where the bus is waiting at the terminus and there is only the driver and one passenger. This poem evokes simple imagery and makes no grand statements. The same could be said of the poem Rampart – another travelling poem which employs the imagery of nature and the little things like ‘gullys’ and ‘walls’ that one would otherwise ignore.
No doubt Umberto Fiori is a fine Italian poet and if you really want to be surprised by fine writing then make your way to Books Upstairs and enjoy volumes that are unique to this particular bookshop.
A Gardener Writes 