I’d never thought I’d say that one day.

I believed the lack of inspiration was the worst thing in the world. That when it hit, it was a catastrophe. Well, I’ve just found out that the contrary can just be as problematic; there are only 24 hours in a day, and my chronic lack of focus really becomes a hassle in this case. (I can’t focus well nor for long, really. I hide it well, but I can’t.)

I’m currently in the throes of inspiration overload. Too many things going on in my head, too many things I want to do, much more than what I can do, in fact. Ideas for short stories are bursting out of my mind every ten minutes, and when it’s not for stories, it’s for illustrations. I can’t focus on work well, I can’t focus on finishing my novel, since five minutes into my writing, I already feel like doing something else, not out of lack of inspiration, but out of wanting to concretize other thoughts.

A quick link for today, but one I’ve found useful when it comes to web-design and picking the right color schemes: Wellstyled’s Color Scheme Generator.

Through the use of a wheel of colors, you can pick a color dominant, and see how other colors fare against it. Different options are available; whether you wish to prioritize the view of simple contrasts or to see how multiple color schemes are rendered against the chosen background, it’ll be easy to get a first idea of what a webpage will look like. A whole set of options also allows you to check how the displayed scheme will appear to color blind people (protanopy, full color blindness…). There’s much more you can do with it, but these are already a good preview of what this color picker lets you do.

I keep a stack of such little tools nearby. I always find them useful to see in a few clicks if the idea I have in mind can work or if it’ll be a visual aggression all by itself, this without demanding me to modify my stylesheets and upload them first.

Y Tags: colors | color+scheme | web-design

I can’t quite remember now on whose blog I had seen this mentioned; I know it can’t have been more than two or perhaps three weeks ago. Anyway, for whoever would need this information: there’s an option, in WordPress 2.0’s beta, that allows you to import posts from Blogger to WordPress. This can be quite useful if you want to move to WP, but cringe at the idea of copying/pasting all your old posts manually. Note that this is what I did, back in February, when I moved by Second Life blog to WordPress… It was terribly boring, I tell you. And I didn’t even have that many posts to start with.

I’ve tested the feature on two old little blogs I had set up a couple years ago for a SWG character that I never got to finish (since I’ve decided to not try the game in the end) and for another MMORPG-related project. The points I’ve been able to note down so far are:

Neil at Citizen of the Month suggests that Thanksgiving should also be First Commenter Day, which, all in all, I find a nice idea. Who would we be, we bloggers, without our readers and commenters, who so kindly let us know what they think of our constant babble and opinions?

Today, it is all about GIVING THANKS.

How can we thank our fellow BLOGGERS? We read each other, we help each other with our designs and templates, and we cry on each other’s shoulder when a “blog crush” goes sour. On Thanskgiving, we should THANK our fellow bloggers.

When I first started blogging, I was like a Pilgrim who just landed on Plymouth Rock. I was isolated and alone. For weeks, I wrote this blog without any direction or confidence in my ability. And then he appeared — like the Native American with his corn — my first commenter!

And my own thanks go to Larys, currently exiled on this small corner of a big isle that is Northern Ireland, and blogging about her experiences there on Many Shades Of Green. She actually has the honor of being the first commenter on both versions of this blog, since at the time, it was still one and only webpage.

(Via The Blog Herald)

Y Tags: blogging | comments | Thank+Your+First+Commenter+Day

I’m currently reading The Cobra Event by Richard Preston, and in all honesty… I think someone should fire his editor. Quickly.

You see, it’s not always easy, as a person whose mother tongue isn’t English, to appreciate one’s style. What is “good”? What is “bad”? Am I entitled to have an opinion about the quality of one’s writing style, or should I just shut up, since I can’t possibly be knowledgeable enough? Often, I’ve been wondering about that. I’ve been studying English from the age of 11 up to 20, went through three years of intensive lessons in high-school due to the program I was in, and after this, I’ve practiced daily thanks to my use of the Web and reading books (along with chatting with pals through Skype). If I don’t have the right to voice an opinion, I don’t know what it takes.