writing

I recently told my Facebook friends that I was thinking of writing a book to help people get better photos with their fancy cameras, and received a lot of positive feedback.

Getting consistently sharp, vivid, interesting photos doesn't have to be hard.

Some of the things I want to write about include:

• Getting photos that aren't too bright or too dark.
• Getting photos where people aren't blurry.
• Making people look great.
• Taking pictures that are beautiful, more often.

I don't want to be technical in this book, other than introducing people, slowly, to important concepts in photography. I want to show people through example and experience exactly what's going on when they snap a picture that they later find to be ugly, horrible, or too blurry or bright/dark to use.

What are some other things that you might want to learn in a book on basic photography, and how you can make more pictures that are beautiful? I'd love to know!

This month, my old Mac story about a IIci was featured on on the excellent Apple-related blog 512 Pixels, by Stephen Hackett: Old Mac of the Month: Macintosh IIci.

I briefly mention the IIci in my (not-yet-complete) Computing History article here on Life is a Prayer.com. I really liked the IIci, and it's probably one of my favorite Macs of all time, especially considering I probably owned and used it the longest!

Special thanks to my brother and dad, who not only helped me get into electronics and computing, but also helped me edit the article.

My relationship with writing is a funny thing; I've never been a 'writer', per-se, but I do love writing things from time to time. I probably write about as much prose as the average active blogger, but a lot of my writing never sees the light of day, nor is it focused in one particular area.

I blog about Drupal development and technology over on my Midwestern Mac blog, about the Church and technology on my Open Source Catholic blog, about life in general here, and about a variety of other things on various other blogs and fora.

But I think it's really important for someone who is serious about writing—and writing well—to do two things:

1. Stay inspired
2. Throw out the garbage

These two actions support and help each other; discarding mediocre writing projects and posts will allow you to take a fresh look at what you're writing, while staying inspired can help you more easily discern what's garbage, and what can be engaging and/or informative.

Just yesterday, I spent over an hour writing a post I thought would turn out funny, a bit tongue-in-cheek, and mildly informative... but it just didn't happen. Instead of wasting more of my time trying to make a mediocre post a little less mediocre, I threw it out, and started this post instead.

It's hard to stay inspired, but simply clearing away distractions helps (very rarely do distractions aid in inspiration). My favorite writing is often done after I've taken a break from coding or playing a game (or something else that involves a bit of concentration), and simply read a book, watched a video, prayed a short prayer, or did nothing at all.