I write a lot. Sometimes more than I’d want to admit, but at the very least, we’re talking several pages daily. I actually used to write a lot more, in my teens, since I was one of those teenagers that wasn’t stimulated by school, hence I skipped classes and spent my time reading and writing. As you’ve probably gathered, fiction is an obsession of mine, fantasy in particular, although that follows my mood.

Add all the freelance writing I do, on a weekday basis, and my own projects, as well as my blogs, and you’ve got quite a lot of writing right there. Not to mention the fact that I always play with a handful of projects in one of my Moleskine notebooks at all times, not all writing is done on the computer. More

This week has been rough on me, due to illness and a lot of appointments, making it hard to do any serious work. But I did that anyway, as you can see, and I also wrapped up a few things, which felt nice. More on that later.

• Bloatware: How to Avoid It In Your Application
  A column on bloatware, on Devlounge
• B5media Revamps Pay Model, Bloggers Lose Money
  A feature story on b5media’s new pay model, on The Blog Herald
• Interview with Brian Gardner on the Revolution Theme Going Open Source
  An interview with Brian, as a follow-up to the previous story, on The Blog Herald
• Brian Gardner’s Revolution Theme Goes Open Source
  Feature story on the Revolution Theme going GPL, on The Blog Herald
• Using WordPress or Movable Type as a CMS
  A wrap-up post on blog platforms as CMS’s, on The Blog Herald

As I said, news due soon!

You know, editors are lazy some times. Rather, they are whenever they can afford to be, which isn’t because they have low standards or are nasty little buggers. No, it’s a lot easier than that, they are busy busy busy running the publication, making sure it works out in any possible way. Online editors usually have more than just content in mind, they need to make sure that the traffic is decent enough, otherwise the site will falter as will the cash flow, and with no money to spend on good writers, well, there’s just not much to do then, right? More

This week has been crazy, and this is catching up with me right now. I’ll have to break my rule and pull some workhours this weekend, probably on Sunday. This includes writing and revising freelance work for various sites, design work, theme packaging, and possibly some development with the Notes Blog theme, which I have been forced to neglect most of the week. I’m not happy with the current situation, and it shows in the lack of posts here, but hopefully I’ll be back on track by next week.

• Outsourcing Comments: What Do You Think?
  A column on hosted comment services for blogs, on Devlounge
• Interview with Helium’s Mark Ranalli, on citizen journalism and more
  Interview, on The Blog Herald
• GigaOM, VentureBeat, and ReadWriteWeb Content on NYTimes.com
  A feature story on syndication, on The Blog Herald
• Twitter on the Web: Not Exactly Up to Date
  News post on the Twitter redesign, on The Blog Herald
• Twhirl Adds Laconica Support, One of Many
  A news post on Laconica and Twhirl, on The Blog Herald

See you next week.

I made my debut post on GigaOM this week, which was fun. I’m doing some freelance work for them, and I’d reckon you’ll see my name pop up in the content every now and then from now on. Not on a daily basis or anything, but there’s some stuff lined up. Other than that, there’s been a lot of meetings and stuff to manage due to the fiscal year coming to a close for my company, and the fact that we signed a distributor’s agreement for Scandinavia for a certain product. More

You might think this is a little premature, since WordPress 2.7 isn’t due out until in November this year, but I just couldn’t wait any longer. I’ve mentioned my Notes Blog WordPress theme previously, and I’ve promised to make it available for free.

And you know what, I intend to keep that promise!

My goal is to have the Notes Blog theme available for download by the time WordPress 2.7 is launched, with a possible beta version before that. Again, we’re talking November here, no sooner. And no, there won’t be support for previous versions of WordPress, although the theme might very well work in them anyway. Most likely, actually, but don’t come whining to me if it doesn’t.

So what’s the fuzz about, why WordPress 2.7 and why not now? More

I’ve been working on some design stuff this week, it’ll probably be a blog post in the coming week. Some good news, and some bad, at least for me and my plans… I also pulled The Blog Herald out of the beta sphere, so now my version is up there. There are still plans, ideas, and whatnot, but due to several reasons, none of these will be realized anytime soon. That might be a good thing, though, since it means that we can focus on the content. Because of my behind the scenes work, most of this week’s Blog Herald stories have been news posts.

• Google Buys Korean Blog Company
  Google spends money in Korea, on The Blog Herald
• The Death of Internet Explorer 6: Still Prematurely Called
  A column on Internet Explorer 6, on Devlounge
• NCsoft Consolidates Studios Into NC West
  I wrote the expert’s opinion on this matter, on Forever Geek

My shortest list yet! I did, however, just finish The Green Knight short story, so you could always read that.

I just can’t get used to the madness that is Windows Vista! Granted, it has gotten a lot better since SP1 was pushed out through Windows Update, but there are still things that annoy the crap out of me. Like the fact that it thinks it is a good idea to start searching the whole bloody computer for possible security issues, viruses, trojans, and whatnot, just like that. That’s great for stability, and for performance too, having the computer doing that while I’m playing an intense game of Age of Conan. I also absolutely hate the fact that the system keeps warning me that UAC is disabled. Well duh, how do you think that happened?!

The worst part of it all, however, is the default update routines for Windows Update. Downloading updates in the background is fine, it won’t take so much off my computer’s performance, but then installing them, rebooting the computer, without giving me a chance to say no, well, that’s not OK!

The fact that this can happen while I’m doing something else, like playing a game, is truly poor design. Sure, I can turn it off, but why was it on per default, and what if I lose data to this madness? So no, Windows Vista is not my ideal desktop…

Right this moment, I’m installing Debian in a virtual machine on my Mac Pro. Earlier today I installed Kubuntu, and managed to crash everything while installing Ubuntu, which was probably due to VMware Fusion (reviewed here) not getting a response from me, rather than an issue with Ubuntu itself. These are open source Linux distributions, free to use, and usually a lot more secure than the other operating systems. That would be Windows and OS X.

As I said, I’m playing around on my Mac Pro, so you’ve probably guessed I’m not entirely happy with OS X, Apple’s own OS. I used to run Windows, so I know what I’m comparing with. More

Another Friday, and I’m not behind my desk this week either. This time it is the end of the fiscal year of my company, so I’m needed at HQ for number crunching (not really, it is already done) and budgeting for the next year. Fun stuff. Anyway, here’s the highlight of this week’s freelance writing.

• Camino’s Mike Pinkerton Working on Mac Version of Google Chrome
  More Google Chrome coverage, this time on the Mac version, on The Blog Herald
• Google Chrome: Initial Reports Round-up
  Round-up on the Google Chrome coverage, on The Blog Herald
• Maybe it is Time for a Super Premium Version of Akismet?
  Editorial on Akismet and comment spam, on The Blog Herald
• Captions Coming to YouTube
  Feature story on subtitling on YouTube, on The Blog Herald
• Finding Harmony Between Categories and Tags on Blogs
  On how to use categories and tags on blogs, on Devlounge
• How to Create a Mobile Site with MoFuse
  A tutorial about just that, over at Nettuts

Also, don’t forget the interview with Collis Ta’eed over at BloggerTalks. We’re talking about the Envato network, paid content, their new theme marketplace, and branding, so you should definitely read it.