1. Interesting Content – This seems like a no-brainer, but it’s something you should never overlook. You need to make your readers want to come back and visit your blog to read more. Whether quality recipes, raving restaurant reviews, or a captivating story, you need to give your readers something they can take away.

2. Blog Design – With so many food blogs out there, first impressions mean everything. A neon, disorganized design will turn readers away much more quickly than one that’s simple and elegant. So even if you don’t have web design skills, a wise template choice can make a big difference.

3. Blog Tools – All those add-ons provided by your blog platforms, like search capability, archive, and labels, will actually make a big difference for your blog. Why? They allow readers to easily navigate all the information in your blog, not just the new stuff. However, too many unnecessary gadgets (or ads, for that matter) can turn readers away in frustration.

4. Be Different – In order to have a successful food blog, you need to stand out from the crowd of food bloggers. You could pick a certain food niche (gluten-free, desserts, local cuisine, etc.), take creative or amusing photos, or simply blow your readers away with your writing. Of course, this individuality should come from who you are, so that your blog has integrity.

5. Stay Focused – Once you pick a certain theme, stick to it! If you provide daily recipes and then one day suddenly go on a rant against the world, readers may not come back, especially if you do this on a normal basis.

6. Stay Committed – Decide from the beginning how often you will update your blog. Many bloggers start out blogging every day, then run out of ideas and only post a few times a month. Nothing puts readers off more than checking a blog to see that it hasn’t been updated for weeks.

7. Leave Comments – Commenting on other food blogs is a great way to promote your site. However, your comments should be insightful and positive so that readers will be curious to visit your blog. Usually you don’t need to leave your blog address in comments – in the same blogging platform, your name will link to your blog.

8. Detailed Recipes – If your blog contains recipes, you should be as detailed as possible so that your readers can re-create the delectable treats you present! Mention issues that might arise in the cooking process so that readers know what to expect. If you adapt a recipe from a book or another blog, make sure you give credit where credit is due. The same goes for photographs!

9. Gaining Readership – You can’t expect to attract readers out of the blue, even with an amazing blog. Leave valuable comments, link to other blogs, and participate in blog events (mainly contests on other blogs and conferences). You might also consider Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which means using target keywords in specific places to help your blog show up in searches.

10. Public Relations – You may start to get a lot of emails with your blog, about everything from link exchanges, food questions and tips, or even people wanting to send you stuff. Of course, you’ll also get lots of spam. Always be polite when answering emails – that is, those you decide to answer. If you’re asked to do an interview, you should seriously consider the offer, as it’s a great way to gain new readers.

And one final bonus tip: Have fun! If you love food, writing a food blog should be an enjoyable experience. However, make sure you treat it like any other job and take some time for yourself as well.

Joseph Morris has been a professional chef for over 20 years. He also owns the site Culinary Arts College  for students interested in getting a degree in culinary arts.

Who says that only visual artists such as painters and architects can make masterpieces that can astound us all? Even writers can do the same thing. The only difference is that writers make use of words and even simple illustrations to blow away the spectators which are mainly the readers. If you are really a good writer, there is no doubt that you can do such thing. You just have to make sure that you writer creatively and that you are also a versatile writer, meaning that you can write about anything at any given time. You need to be flexible. If you want to test how flexible or versatile you are as a writer, this is one test that you can do…write about something that is not common to many of us. If you can do that and you can get a good impression, it is an indication that you really are a good writer.

Why not try to write about proflix flip books? Have you heard about these? You might get the misconception that these are actual reading books but they are not. This kind of books refers to those photographs that are made tangible by the technology of electromagnets. This is actually an upgraded version of those things that are represented by electronic images. As we all know of it, when things are represented this way, we will not be able to hold or touch them. But with the use of the said technology, we can now have a seemingly hard copy of the image. It is such a beautiful subject for writing because it can be very catchy especially for those who are very much into reading articles about technology. It is about time you test yourself as a writer.

OMAR KHAYYAM, a Persian poet, mathematician, and astronomer, was born at Nishapur, in Khorasan, about A.D. 1050 and died about 1125. Khayyam means “the Tent-maker,” and it is probable that Omar maintained himself by the craft until the sun of fortune rose for him. He was in youth a pupil of the most famous philosopher of Khorasan; he and two of his fellow-students entered into a compact that if either of them rose to fortune he should share it with the others. Nizam-ul-mulk, one of the three, became in time Vizier of the mighty Alp Arslan, and his successor, Malek, son and grandson of Togrul Beg, the Tartar founder of the Seljouk dynasty. He devoted himself to study, especially of astronomy, and when vizier undertook to reform the confused Mohammedan calendar, Omar was one of those to whom the work was confided. The result of their labors is thus described by Gibbon; “The reign of Malek was illustrated by the Gelalaan era; and all errors, whether past or future, were corrected by a computation of time which surpasses the Julian and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.”

Of his Rubaiyat “Stanzas,” only one manuscript, written at Shiras in 1640, exists in England ; it contains one hundred and fifty-eight quatrains, the first, the second, and fourth lines usually, though not invariably, rhyming together. About two thirds of this manuscript was translated into English by EDWARD FITZGERALD in 1872. A superb edition of this translation was published in 1884 at Boston, in a large folio volume, profusely illustrated by Elihu Vedder; the illustrations occupying some ten times as much as space as the text. If we could conceive of the Greek Anacreon and the Roman Lucretius combined onto one being, we should have something like the Persian OMAR KHAYYAM. Of him and his poem, Mr. Fitzgerald says:

“Having failed of finding any Providence but destiny, and any world but this, he set about making the most of it, preferring rather to soothe the soul into acquiescence with things he saw them than to perplex it with vain disquietude after what they might be…I have arranged Rubaiyat into a sort of Ecloque, with perhaps a little less than the equal proportion of the ‘Drink and make merry,’ which recurs over-frequently in the original. Either way, the result is sad enough. Saddest, perhaps, when most ostentatiously merry; more apt to move the sorrow than anger toward the old Tent-maker, who, after vainly endeavoring to unshackle his steps from destiny, and to catch some glimpse of tomorrow, falls back upon today (which has outlasted so many tomorrows) as the only ground he has got to stand upon, however, slipping from under his feet.”

Mr. Vedder arranges the quatrains somewhat differently from Mr. Fitzgerald, whose order we follow:

Selections from the “Rubaiyat”

I

Wake! for the sun who scattered into flight

The stars before him from the field of Night,

Drives Night along with them from Heaven, and strikes

The Sultan’s turret with a shaft of Light.

II

Before the phantom of False-Morning died,

We thought a Voice within the Tavern cried,

“When all the Temple is prepared within,

Why nods the drowsy worshipper outside?”

III

And as the cock crew, those who stood before

The Tavern shouted, “Open, then, the door!

You know how little time we have to stay,

And once departed, may return no more.”

XLI

Perplexed no more with Human or Divine,

To-morrow’s tangle to the winds resign,

And lose your fingers in the kisses of

The Cypress-slender minister of Wine.

XLII

And if the Wine you drink, the lip you press,

End-in what all begins and ends-“Yes!”

Think, then, you are Today and Yesterday

You were-Tomorrow you shall be not less.

XLIII

So when the Angle of the darker Drink

At last shall find you at the river-brink,

And Offering his cup invite your Soul

Forth to your lip to quaff-you shall not shrink.

XLIV

Why, if the Soul can fling the dust aside

And naked on the air of Heaven ride,

Were not a shame-were not a shame for him

In the clay carcass crippled to abide?

XLV

‘Tis but a tent where takes his one-day’s rest

A Sultan to the realm of death addrest,

The sultan rises, and the dark Ferbash

Strikes, and prepares it for another guest.

XLVI

And fear not lest Existence, closing your

Account and mine; should know the like no more

The Eternal Saki from the bowl has poured

Millions of bubbles like us-and will pour.

XLVII

When You and I behind the veil and past,

Oh! but the long, long while the World shall last,

Which of our coming and departure heeds

As the Seven Seas should heed a pebble cast.

XLVIII

A moment’s halt – a momentary taste

Of Being from the well amid the waste –

And lo! the phantom caravan has reached

The nothing it set out from. Oh, make haste!

XLIX

Would you that spangle of Existence spend

About the Secret – quick about it, friend!

A Hair, perhaps divides the False and True,

And upon what, prithee, does life depend?

L

A Hair, perhaps, divides the False and True;

Yes; and a Single letter the clew –

Could you but find it – to the Treasure-house,

and, peradventure, to the Master, too;

LI

Whose secret Presence through Creations’s veins

Running, quick-silver-like, eludes your pains.

Taking all shapes from Fish to Moon,

They change and perish all – but He remains

LII

A moment guessed, then back behind the fold.

Immured for darkness, round the Drama rolled,

Which, for the pastime of Eternity,

He does Himself conclude, enact, behold.

LIII

But if in vain down on the stubborn floor

Of Earth, and up to Heaven’s unopening door

You gaze today, while You are – You, how then

To-morrow You, when shall be You no more?

LIV

Waste not your hour, nor in the vain pursuit

Of This and That endeavor and dispute;

Better be jocund with fruitful Grape

Than sadden after none – or bitter fruit.

LV

You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse

I made a second marriage in my house;

Divorced old barren Reason from my bed,

And took the Daughter of the Vine to spouse.

LVI

For Is and Isn’t with rule and line.

And Up-and-down by logic I define,

Of all that one should care to fathom, I

Was never deep in anything but Wine.

LVII

Ah! But my computation, people say,

Reduced the Year to better reckoning. Nay,

T’was only striking from the calendar

Unborn tomorrow and dead Yesterday.

LVIII

And lately by the Tavern-door agape

Came shining through the dark an Angel-shape

Bearing a vessel on his shoulder; and

He bade me taste of it: and t’was the Grape!

LIX

The Grape, that can with logic absolute

The two-and-seventy jarring sects confute;

The sovereign Alchemist that, in a truce

Life’s leaden metal into gold transmutes.

LXIII

Oh, threats of Hell and hopes of Paradise!

One thing at least is certain – this life flies;

One thing is certain, and the rest is Lies;

The flower that once has blown forever dies.

LXIV

Strange, is it not, that of the myriads who

Before us passed the door of Darkness through,

Not one returns to tell us of the road,

Which to discover we must travel, too?

LXV

The revelations and devout and learned,

Who rose before us and as prophets burned,

All are but stories which, awoke from sleep,

They told their fellows, and to sleep returned.

LXVI

I sent my soul through the Invisible,

Some letter of that After-life to spell;

And by and by my soul returned to me,

And answered, “I myself am Heaven and Hell.”

LXVII

Heaven’s but the Vision of fulfilled Desire.

And Hell the Shadow of a soul on fire.

Cast on the darkness into which ourselves.

So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.

LXVIII

We are no other than a moving row

Of magic Shadow-shapes that come and go

Round with this sun-illuminated lantern, held

In midnight by the Master of the Show;

LXIX

Impotent Pieces of the game He plays,

Upon his checker board of Nights and Days,

Hither and thither moves and checks and mates

And one by one back in the closet lays.

LXX

The Ball no questions makes of Ayes and Noes,

But right or left; as strikes the Player, goes;

And that he that tossed you down into the filed,

He knows about it all – He knows, He knows.

LXXX

The moving Finger writes – and having writ,

Moves on; nor all your piety and wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half of line,

Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.

LXXXI

And that unveiled bowl they call the sky,

Whereunder crawling, cooped, w elive and die,

Lift not your hands to it for help – for It

As impotently rools as you or I.

LXXXII

With the first clay they did the last man knead,

And there of the last harvest sowed the seed;

And the first morning of Creation wrote

What the last dawn of Reckoning shall read.

XC

What! out of senseless Nothing to provoke

A conscious Something to present the yoke

Of unpermitted Pleasure, under pain

Of everlastink penalties if broke!

XCI

O thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin

Beset the road I was travel in,

Thou wilt not with predestined evil round

Enmesh, and then impute my fall to Sin!

XCII

O Thou, who Man of baser earth didst make,

And even with Paradise devise Snake,

For all the sin wherewith the face of Man

Is blackened, Man’s forgiveness give – and take!

Once you become a student writer you will have the chance to voice what you feel, your thought or idea. One of the problems I have encountered in making my column is the title. Then the words “Simple Graph” came to my mind.

Simple means easy, not complex, and easy to understand, while graph means the diagram stating the relationship between the two variables.

Simple graphs mean stating a relation or comparison of the topic being discussed in my column.

…of reality

Many opinions, many justifications but only one thing is true, “the world of reality”.

Being a writer of CAST Chronicle serves as my avenue to explore the world, the real happening inside the university. A lot of excursion will be explored not in place but in the place of reality. Will as student like me or like you make a difference? As I remember clearly, Dr. Jose Rizal said, “Ang kabataan ang pag-asa ng bayan” but will this statement be remembered by us youth? When the mere fact that we don’t know how to deal with the world of dark reality that there’s something wrong going on.

Our college dean said in her column, “that the cooperation with entire student populates and administrations while create a good atmosphere towards the success of the university”. But how can we cooperate to the administration if they don’t know how to cooperate also? We are just only students, a student who is a learner from his environment.

…of hullabaloo

Every department of Pangasinan State University has its own department t-shirt. The Mathematics, Computer Science and ICT has their department t-shirt. What’s the issue? Nothing, I just aim for 5 but they give me 3.

Many don’t understand the meaning of simple statement, may be you will think this way: “The student of the said department doesn’t know how to aim higher.” Or may be this way: “Student doesn’t deserve the grade of 1” but what is the real meaning of “I aim for 5, but they give 3.”

According to the president of Math Circle Club Mr. Faulo Ramos said: These mean that you will be aiming for something worst once you experience the tough of being a student in the field of Technology and Mathematics. This is just normal, but once you overcome all of these getting a grade of 3 or higher than that will do.

Another thought is if you aim for nothing isn’t it is much receiving for the fruit of your hard work, rather than aim for higher will you get failed it is disappointing, and maybe next time around you will not be wake up to face the challenge again.

It’s better to think positive rather than thinking negative. Come to think of it did the President let his constituent down? But then I respect the opinion of each who posts their sentiment about the issue.

Alfred Lord Tennyson described the experience as “the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words” [source: Epilepsy.com]. Before they happened to Gustave Flaubert, the Frenchman became terrified, writing that he felt “a whirlpool of ideas and images in my poor brain, during which it seemed that my consciousness, that my me sank like a vessel in a storm.” Lewis Carroll also shared this sense of growing unreality, writing that his made him feel strange, like another person [source: Epilepsy.com]. These descriptions aren’t nightmares or passages from science-fiction novels. They’re attempts to describe what it feels like to a have an epileptic seizure — in the case of these men, likely caused by temporal lobe epilepsy.

Flaubert, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Lord Byron, Dante Alighieri, Sir Walter Scott, Edward Lear, Jonathan Swift — all legendary writers and all epileptics. The hallucinations, seizures and flood of memories associated with temporal lobe epilepsy influenced some of these writers profoundly. Dickens, Dostoevsky and Flaubert cast characters in their works as epileptics. Carroll’s bizarre, dreamlike fictions, such as “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” seem to share some characteristics with the above descriptions of seizures. Some critics have argued that the entirety of “Alice’s Adventures” is a symbolic representation of epileptic seizures.

Many of these writers with epilepsy recorded descriptions of their experiences, leading to posthumous diagnoses, although some were diagnosed within their lifetimes. Even so, the treatments available were fairly crude, especially when compared to modern therapies (suggestions included drinking significant quantities of water, castration and long walks in severe weather). In many communities, the disorder had great stigma attached to it, which is still a source of difficulty for some epileptics today. But now, epilepsy is much better understood and often treatable. We also know some of the risk factors associated with epileptic seizures. For example, alcohol probably increases the chance of seizures, a fact unknown to the aforementioned writers, some of whom, like Lord Byron, were known for their propensity for drink.

Epilepsy and Hypergraphia

Besides its tendency to induce hallucinations and other disturbing stimuli, epilepsy has been linked to a condition called hypergraphia, an all-consuming desire to write. The overwhelming urge to write — and to write constantly — and a form of epilepsy appear to come from the same part of the brain: the temporal lobe. A troubled temporal lobe may then both spur someone to write obsessively and also cause temporal lobe epilepsy, which itself can provide some interesting material for writers. Other disorders that have been reported to cause hypergraphia are Asperger’s syndrome, bipolar disorder, which shares some characteristics with epilepsy, and schizophrenia. It’s worth noting that many of these writers, and epileptic artists like Vincent van Gogh, were quite prolific, in some cases over rather short life spans. (Van Gogh, who may have had both epilepsy and bipolar disorder, painted constantly and wrote his brother multiple letters a day.)

Epilepsy and hypergraphia can be accompanied by depression, which for some artists is a bane and for others a challenging source of inspiration. But depression, with its many possible causes, isn’t likely a source of artistic talent. Instead, it often provides a reason for people to sort out their problems through art [source: BBC]. Similarly, the presence of hypergraphia isn’t a guarantee of talent. But creative thought, and writing in particular, seems to rely on the left temporal lobe, though both sides of the brain play important roles.

Source: www.howstuffworks.com

]]> http://www.wantedwriter.com/great-writers-with-epilepsy.html/feed 0