Told you you had nothing to worry about.
Congratulations Baby!
Month: March 2008
Advice for Aspiring Freelance Writers and other Nonsense
I enjoyed this article about writing for peanuts because it hits the nail right on the head about what it is to live in the world of Internet freelance writing. The example mentioned is somewhat off though because the writer the article talked about earned a ‘measly’ $40.00 which by our standards would be pretty good.
The point of the article though is that there are thousands of writers out there making anything from pocket change to respectful amounts of dough writing for blogs, news websites, zines and others, mostly on the ‘net. I myself pay P200.00 / article and am willing to pay as much as P1,200 to P2,000 / month for more regular gigs, depending on quantity, quality and images. The great thing about it is most of our writers are even surprised they get paid at all, like the article says, they’re happy writing purely for passion (which is great because that’s what makes writers to begin with).
Sadly, I’ve never been able to take advantage of that myself. Coming from the old school, I earned only from print publications when I was still working freelance gigs (listed down in my About page). I earned as much as P3.5 to P5k per article then, so I squeezed it for all it was worth and wrote up to 4 to even 7 articles in one month during my really prolific periods. Even the broadsheet I wrote for, known for paying the lowest rate in the industry, at least paid P900 / article (approx $20.00).
Continue reading Advice for Aspiring Freelance Writers and other Nonsense
Today I’ve..
Updated Akismet in all blogs.
Updated Wp-Polls in 2 of the 3 blogs.
Updated MomEx Events with four schools’ Summer Programs (approx. 8-10 events each).
Created a special feedburner feed for MomEx Events.
Fixed those ugly Ad network ads, changed them to default sidebar colors.
Wrote a blogpost about DLSU ADMU for BallEx (last night).
Fixed the css of pagenavi to look better on MomEx and BallEx.
Placed BallEx pagenavi code on archives.php for both top and bottom.
Placed next and previous links at ballex on single.php for both top and bottom (far easier to navigate now).
Invoiced Client.
RIP Arthur C. Clarke
I can’t believe Arthur C. Clarke is dead. He is one of the most influential writers I’ve ever read, whose books have become part of my life. His book Rendezvous with Rama was probably the first that forced me to think outside of what my eyes see. Space Odyssey 2001 brought me to far away places and situations and made me think of things that a city boy like me would never have thought of otherwise.
Strangely enough, my most memorable is his story ‘The Deep Range’, which talked about farming whales as if they were cattle, eventually ending world hunger. After which at some point, religious influences caused the characters in the book to rethink their need for meat, and coincided with scientific advances that allowed for meat alternatives that were indistinguishable in every way from the real thing. I remember the main character’s acceptance of this difficult fact start to seed in their psyche, eventually leading them to acceptance.
I love Laszlo. But..
Ok fine. I’m starting to feel he’s a little underpowered. Hahaha. I know you’re laughing, Blen. But I can’t help it. Kapos e. Blame it on the fact I used to have a nice kick ass (ok, semi kick ass) Pentax SLR when I was a teen, and I took Mandy Navasero classes one bored summer way back 2,000 years ago in Makati. There I learned basic lighting and even *gasp* the lost art of film developing, which I eventually had to stop because it turned out I was allergic to the awful fumes. Sad, because I was actually getting pretty good at that.
Anyway point is, I’ve been doing the rounds of events and have started to make plans of my own, all involving the nice – to – have ability to produce good great fantastic images. Laszlo’s CMOS or whatever image gathering engine it has (I forgot) is up to the task. The problem is the lenses, or rather, the flexibility I miss if you can’t change to macro or wide angle lenses, or even insert filters. I absolutely loooved filters. I was Da Master of filters. I don’t think Laszlo’s lens can even do basic 35mm stuff the older SLRs could.
Finally Met Yuga
I’m very glad to have made Abe Olandre‘s acquaintance last Friday, finally, at a Nokia event. We were amongst the group who came very early, so I went up to him and explained who I was, and he was very accomodating.
He said he had heard of my sites from his kumpare Alwell whose managed web hosting service I used to use, probably when they were talking shop. I had to leave Mobilehive when the sites were exceeding my monthly allocations almost within the 1st week, which I’m sure I talked about at length on this blog.
Anyway, Abe has always been on my radar, but we’ve never had the chance to meet, mostly because I haven’t ever attended any sort of blog meetup or conference since I started. When we started talking, I felt as if I was talking to an old friend, and for good reason. He is the only person I have met who is in exactly the same business as I am, doing almost the same methods as I do as well. We are both publishers and we each own several blogs, each of which pursue their own paths. He came in from the web hosting side of things, never expecting to write, while I came from the writing and publishing world so to speak.
Pacquiao Fearless Forecast plus Other Thoughts
I’ve been scouring the Internet for the past hour trying to find a streaming live video, audio or otherwise any whatever sort of livecast to no avail. I’ve found a few but they aren’t free, and their amateurish looking sites don’t look very reassuring, so no go.
Jill’s household usually buys into whatever Sky offers during Pacquiao fights to watch it live, but I’m still suffering from heat fatigue I got last Friday when I stupidly took a walk under direct sunlight for almost an hour, making me sick. I had two events that day and by the second one that evening my muscles were cramping and I felt like collapsing. Anyway I’ve decided to rest in for the weekend, and maybe get some work in too.
So anyway here’s what I think: Pacquiao’s gonna win. Which round? I dunno. What do I base this on? Just the way he looks. I know it sounds corny, but he does look like he’s got the ‘eye of the tiger’, whatever that is. Win or lose, he’s really become more impressive than I originally sized him up to be, mainly because inspite of the fact that he has already achieved far more than our wildest dreams would’ve thought anyone could, he’s still at it, training like his whole survival is at stake.
Continue reading Pacquiao Fearless Forecast plus Other Thoughts
Learn To Read
One of the nice things I like about big Press gigs is you occasionally get the chance to talk to other writers, many of whom have been in the business for decades. Yesterday I was seated beside friends from Manila Tribune, a sorta celeb guy from Studio 23 and interestingly enough, editors from 34 year old magazine Mod.
I unfortunately wasn’t able to ask for a calling card, so I forgot her name in the mayhem that is a Press event that included the usual big announcements, a displaying of new prods plus of course feeding us and raffling off prizes. At any rate we fortunately found time to small talk about a topic close to my heart, the dwindling number of readers and quality of written and spoken English in the Philippines, something she knew well about, coincidentally being a CEU Journalism Professor as well.
So here’re I’ll share a few things I’ve learned to believe.
One, is that I don’t think ‘Learn To Read campaigns’ are very effective. I’ve seen the ones Inquirer tried to do plus maybe a few others, and they’ve tried going the celebrity route (celebs explaining what reading has done for them etc.) but for the most part, that turns me off more than interests me. Of course, I’ve never been interested in celebs in the first place, so I’m probably an exception.
I’m Coaching the 14-17 yr old boys Basketball Inter Village again
We’ll be known as the Clippers for some odd reason, and first practice is 7am Sat. I’m super excited primarily because it’s the same boys I’m coaching save for a few who’ve gotten older since last year, and secondarily because, secretly, I really wanna get back at the Blue team which beat us by a hair the last time.
As if I’m not busy enough.
Ack, no matter. The game has given me so much, but it has also taken so much as well. I would’ve thought that I’d have stopped learning now, years after the times when I was any good, and when I thought I could’ve contributed the most. If anything, I’ve learned playing it is essentially a selfish thing compared to coaching it. Consequently if there’s any reason why I’m not interested in playing it anymore, its because teaching it, coaching it and sharing it is a thousand times more fulfilling than playing it.
So there. Lesson learned. And more to come, it seems. At any rate, all basketball talk aside, if and when those boys need me, they know I’m just a knock on our door away.
