I’ve become a bit of a software junky recently. When I worked for a small business, there were young, technologically literate staff around, and when I ran into a problem I would simply yodel pathetically across the office until one of them came to my aid. Now that I’m freelance I have had to buy various tools so that I can do …
Pros and cons of software
I receive the weekly newsletter from WordRibbon.Tips.Net, which provides tips on Word 2007. A recent newsletter included tips about building blocks, which I hadn’t come across before. When I had a look at them (under the ‘Insert’ group on the ribbon), I found that they include matching sets of cover pages, headers, footers, text boxes and side bars. Since headers …
Live blog! (or not …)
Last week I gave a talk to the Canberra Society of Editors (CSE). The topic was social networking and blogging, so it seemed a great idea to blog directly from the meeting. I’d got myself organised with a half-written post, and had bookmarked all the sites I planned to talk about. Sadly, I was defeated by technology. For the first …
No need for online training
My attempt at attending a training webinar for Endnote was a disaster, because I couldn’t hear it properly due to a problem with my audio driver. No matter what I did with the settings on my computer, all I could hear was a tiny sound from the laptop’s speakers, and nothing from the headphones. This week I downloaded and installed …
Online training
I use EndNote for dealing with references when I’m editing a document, and thought I was doing a good job of working with the program. However, this week I happened to look at the EndNote website, and realised that Endnote X3 has lots of features that I’m not making use of (probably because I learnt the program with EndNote 9, …
Unexpected benefits of joining CSE
I recently joined the Council of Science Editors (CSE), mainly because I saw some articles on their website that were only accessible to members. Since joining, I haven’t had time to go back to the CSE website, so I thought I had perhaps wasted my money. However, as a member of CSE, I’m now receiving hard copies of Science Editor, the organisation’s bimonthly …
Avoiding an RSI
This week two major work deadlines and a minor family crisis combined to create a perfect storm of stress. My response was to work very hard (including getting up at 5.30am to edit a document), but I could feel the effects in my shoulders and wrists. I tried switching my mouse from the right to the left-hand side of the …
A creative use for business cards
Last week I was feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the need to work both on the business and in it. To reduce the stress, I took a stack of my business cards (I can’t see myself ever needing all 500 of them) and wrote one aspect of the business of the back of each card. I included everything I could think of, and ended …
Building a team
Getting sick put a big hole in my work schedule this week, and made me realise the importance of organising backup. On the plus side, I’ve been doing just that – building up a team of freelancers with a range of skills. I’m finding that this is one of the most interesting and exciting parts of running my own business, and LinkedIn has …
Working from anywhere
Last week I said that carrying the tools of my trade around with me didn’t necessarily mean that I could get myself in the frame of mind required to work while away from home. Now, I’m actually updating my blog while bussing up to Sydney in a rain storm (and have been able to edit a document, email clients and …