Great writing tips

I read a pile of blog postings this weekend about how to improve your blogging. There were three articles that I really enjoyed and wanted to share them with you. They are all short, so check them out and benefit from their authors.

First was a post about checking your grammar and spelling. These are simple things, but often over looked. I know that I don’t always catch typos and poor grammar, but I do try. Here is a great quote from the post.

In the online world, all people really have to go on is what you present to them in your writing.

Jump on over and read what else Kev has to say on the subject.

Secondly is a post along the same lines with 10 great tips on proper grammar. The particular one that I liked was number 4:

Slang. As tempting as it is to write as you speak, even with the idea of appealing to a certain audience, slang is clunky to read, tends to reduce your assumed authority on a topic and may alienate more people than it attracts on the basis that they have no idea what you’re talking about.

And finally, I read a post on what your readers do and don’t need to know about you. There is certainly some personal information you want to share and some you want to keep personal. Here is the summary statement, but be sure to read the whole article.

Sharing your house address can be deadly, sharing your phone number is not advisable, sharing your photo is alright, and sharing your email and real name is recommended.

Please leave a comment at their blog postings if these were helpful to you.

Google Sky and something more!

I just heard about Google Sky which is a new feature inside of Google Earth. It gives you star charts for your current location along with some amazing photos from the Hubble. Just like in Google Earth there are articles you can read about different stars and points of interest. All the major stars and constellations have articles written about them. Very cool.

But it gets amazingly better.

There is a flight simulator hidden in the program! After you install it, you hit Cntl+A (in Linux), Cmd+A (in Mac OSX), Cntl+Alt+A (in Windows). Yes! It works in Linux too.Maiden voyage in Google Earth Flight Simulator

For those not familiar with flight sims (which would include me), there is a list of the keyboard commands you will want to know. You can navigate quite a bit with your mouse, but you will need the keyboard to get the most out of it.

Click on the screen shot to the right to get a full size picture. I chose LAX as my airport of departure for no real reason other than I had recently been there. You will see in the pic that there are 2 push-pins. I was shocked to see them while flying. Those are stores that I had mapped in Google Earth when I was in Long Beach. The flight sim takes into account all of your personal settings inside of Google Earth. Awesome!

I heard about it from Marco’s Blog. Check out his article for more details.

Famous Friday: Planet3rry

This is the first in a series of Friday blog postings where I will attempt to make someone famous. I will do a review each week (if I remember) on Fridays of a blog that I enjoy reading.

This week’s Famous Friday pick is Terry at Planet3rry. Terry is a regular commenter here at MTS. I first heard about his blog through the Phedippidations podcast. Terry’s blog mostly focuses on his running, but like MTS, there is just about everything there. You might even get a look into how efficiently kids can paint each other with markers.

He participates in PhotoHunters, which is a weekly blog posting of a theme through pictures.

Jump on over to www.planet3rry.com and leave a few comments for Terry.

Sore legs

Monday I had a good speed workout. I am still without my track though. I am not sure why the track is not open, but it is getting on my nerves. It is not like I have been running there a long time, but I got used to being able to do speed work on it. Now that I don’t have it available to me, it is irritating. School should have started this week, maybe it will be open next week.

Yesterday, my off day from running, I did a pretty good weight workout. I just have a set of dumbbells, but they give me a pretty good workout anyway. I have not been working the weights as often as I should recently. Yesterday I did some leg work too. Today I am pretty sore all over. My legs were not too bad when I woke up this morning though.

That was then, this is now.

I had a 3 mile tempo run this morning. I did my 1 mile warm up at my desired pace (10:30) and then picked up the pace considerably for my tempo run. I measured that out in kilometers instead of miles. I hit my Km. splits at: 5:46  5:41  5:44  5:45  5:43. My target range was between 5:40 and 5:54 per Km. (or 9:07 to 9:30 miles). I did very well and am pleased.

The first Km. was the slowest and could have to do with the pack of 7 dogs that I had to run through this morning. I really slowed down and tried not to appear aggressive. I guess they bought it. None of them tried to chase me. They just barked.

Towards the end of the second kilometer, I was thinking that I would not be able to make it to 4 at that pace, but I decided to try. When I did finally get to 4 I gave myself permission to slow down just so that I could finish the run. I guess I didn’t listen to myself and slow down any.

But now my legs are really sore. I have a 4 mile recovery run for tomorrow. Good thing that my recovery pace is about as fast as my grand-mother can walk.

Discover Spanish With Us

I am pleased to announce the new website! It is still a work in progress, but we have started putting some content on there to get it moving.

Discover Spanish With Us is an English speaker’s perspective of the Spanish language. It is not an attempt to be scholarly or theoretical. What my wife and I are trying to share there are some observations we have made as we’ve learned–and are learning every day–about Spanish.

One of the words that recently struck me as interesting is the use of the word “discover“ in Spanish. It is not just to find something, but it carries with it the meaning of pulling something apart or uncovering it…investigating. While the English word can be used this way, it is a very common usage in Spanish.

Here is a short excerpt from the entry to the word descubrir/discover:

I first encountered this word used this way in the story of the Bible when four men brought their paralytic friend to Jesus. They were unable to enter the house through traditional means and resorted to discover (uncover) the roof of the house. Here is the wording from Mark 2:4 in the Spanish Bible.

Y como no podían acercarse a él a causa de la multitud, descubrieron el techo de donde estaba…

In the English the word used is uncovered.

Thus was born the idea to share our discoveries, investigations or pulling apart of Spanish words with the world.

If you want to learn some new vocabulary or have an interest in words and their meanings, then jump on over to Discover Spanish With Us and look around. Please leave a comment if you have something to add to the discussion. I am sure it will become a thriving community of like minded students.