socially making the most of the internet

Im not sure what to name this post, but what it is about is socially making the most of the internet, so I guess I will call it that.
One of my brothers was surprised to say the least that considering I have spent less than 6 months really actively on the internet and social media, so I thought I would write about what one should do to make connections with like minded individuals and geniuses on the internet.
The first thing I can think of is to pick a social internet circle and stick with it, I include YouTube in the definition of social internet, as it is most definitely a way to interact socially with others if you so decide. And in ways I exclude the vanilla usage of facebook, as you can use facebook to interact with new people but it is really for reinforcing relationships. Hence I use the term Social Internet rather than Social Network.
Charlie McDonnell is a prime example of how he made YouTube work for him, Although a self admitting nerd and once a shy quiet lad, he is now a musical a YouTube sensation. Who can say the line that many people wish they could, that being "my job is YouTube" Charlie has explained his rise to fame and his thoughts on fame most aptly in this video

and the idea of doing what you do, for you; I think is completely true. I'll be lucky if three people read this, I don't do much on-line to get the attention of others I do it for me.

I use twitter, because writing is my medium of choice although it does not have the same viral nature as YouTube, as tweets are not really passed on outside of twitter and even if they are the don't really go viral, unless its a drunk/high celeb. But through twitter I have a small yet solid base of friends and followers from all over the world. something that is scary.

I did this through constantly being active and joining in conversations with others, an essential trait in the offline social world not surprisingly is essential in the online world too

(sorry that this post is a bit messy)

My Dream Cafe

My dream café, @tropicalfoxtrot and I were discussing, although playfully about opening out own café as we are both coffee addicts. And this got be thingking again about what for me would constute the ideal café. So if anyone out there who loves we is planning to open a café and loves me, then here is a quick guide on how to impress me.

Cheap: yeah, I want there to be the cheapest of the cheap options. I’m not saying I wouldn’t buy anything more expensive, but if you offer a cheap driplator coffee for like a dollar a cup. I will proberply frequent your shop everyday. Snaacks and meals that are closer to what you would hake at home, cheese and vegemite on wholemeal does not cost $5 and I will not pay $5 for it.

Wifi: internet access is one of my necessaries, being able to sit and type away online or peruse the finest drivel the internet has to offer sums up a good experience. Make it cheap or for example free, but only if you buy 5 cups of coffee

Get to know me: I announce my thoughts to the world both online and off, im sure we will be the best of friends. Learn my name and learn my intrests, my visits are more likely to be longer and I’ll buy more. But also (unless your full to bursting) let me hang around either alone or with my friends without pressuring me to buy. (though if you have really cheap coffee then I will most likely be constantly buying :D)

Keep it cool: make yopur décor sturdy and stylish. Don’t just go for a simple tables and chairs set-up. Try big communal tables and private booths too, make youre cafe a social hub. Be open long hours, preferably 24/7 and make the atomoshere at all hour, safe and inviting. I have to request a tech/steam punk orantaed design, with keyboards on the walls and maybe the odd typewriter in the center of a table

Make it individual: and support my individuality, give me a discount on my coffee if I bring my own mug, give your different types of coffee cool names, this one place I passed named each style of coffee ranging from decaf (still asleep) to strong hard blend (start my heart) I think a lot of people would try even the worst coffee if it has a cute and catchy name, make it feel like a secret society.

Reward me: if I frequent your establishment everyday for hours at a time and buy a few litres of coffee and a dozen sandwiches. Reward me, more coffee is one way. But be creative, you could get t-shirts made or badges that announce my loyalty, they also advertise your café so you win too. Put specials on sites such as foursquare, like the mayor gets free coffee, aqgain, its more advertising and it starts up a competition between friends over who can visit and purchase stuff the most often.

Support your customers endevors: have a notice board and space for your customers to exibit art, it will liven the place up and encourage your cutomers to tell people to visit your esablisment to check out there art. A notice board will show customers that you care for them by giving a place to place there ads. They might stick around a bit longer and buy a sandwich to say thank you for helping them find a new roomie.

Location: now this request is purely selfish and just for me, but it does have some benefits to you. First up, please make your store in melbopurne, this is where I live and plan to live for the next half decade, if you do make your café in Melbourne please make it in Hawthorne around Swinburne uni or the CBD along Swanston or Elizabeth street. If you mangage to do this you will get a fair bit of traffic from students from nearby unis. I’d just look for the closest sudent accommodation and build near that, if your open 24/7 and make a decent hangover cure (although I don’t drink) all the better for your wallet.

So I think that just about sums my wants in a café, if you have any more suggestions please post in the comments section below.

Noodle Kingdom

I'm sitting right now at the most eye catching and popular eating spots in Preston although one, I admit, I do not frequent enough. and that would be Noodle Kingdom in Preston after a long afternoon of sitting in the library and trying to write (and I admit failing dismally and resorting to reading a 2 year old, torn copy of girlfriend magazine that was mildly entertain with side servings of offensive) as the library shut I realised that I should probably eat something, as I was really really hungry. So Noodle Kingdom popped into my head, and now greatufully into my belly.
Noodle kingdom, as the title suggests is an Asian restaurant specialising in noodles and dumplings. That has become popular for just that. and a few other things, the reason why it seemed most attractive to me and my rumbling belly was the meal size, for 8.50 I got a massive bowl of pork dumplings, noodles and chinse broccoli in a delicious broth. Om nom nom, that is great for my tummy, tastebuds and wallet. For students out there who can only afford to eat every couple of days but eating migorang instant noodles are starting to adversely affect your health, the I would highly recommend it.
The drinks are not bad either, but they seem to be on the more expensive side and they don’t offer coconut juice. I thought that was a bit odd.
But this place is not just for the desperately hungry who are desperately poor. Noodle Kingdom has gotten some really good write ups from some harsh critics, although I do not remember any names as this place opened a fair while ago now, and was reviewed a while back too. So, if you love your noodles... and especially dumplings or know someone who does, I would highly recommend noodle kingdom.
I must say, as many others have said before me, the customer service is a bit of a mess. They seat you as fast as possible, take your order as fast as possible and ignore you as much as possible. They do all of the things that i was taught not to do when I was a waitress. But they haven’t tried to shoo me out as of yet, and they seem quite laid back, Although this is mid-afternoon on a Saturday and during peak times such as Friday night they have a queue that goes out onto high street, noticeably so.
Overall
Food: 5 stars, the food can't get much better!
Value: 5 stars, So much food... for so little money!
Service: 2 stars, don't even bother asking what they recommend, just pick something before they lose interest.
Presentation
Menu, disorganized and poor English translations, 3 stars
Restaurant, over the top, trying for sophisticated, nothing special, 3 stars
Food, nice and simple plating, tried and tested, 4 stars
FINAL SCORE: 4 stars, lost one star for service and average presentation.

Insider tips:
Don’t be shy, stare down the wait staff, shout out for help. Or you might not even get served
When it is busy, it is busy. Try going there on more offpeak times. (ie. not Friday nights)
On your first few visits, minimum, go with a friend and share one dish, this is honestly how big the servings are.
After a few visits you might find that special dish that you can eat all by yourself, as with many foods, some can be too rich or spicy for your tastes. To use this over use cliché, think of all the starving children, don’t waste food or money by ordering what you can’t eat.
I haven’t seen a single person eat with a fork, I don't even know if they have any,
¬

How I write

So, I have started whiting again, and I am very happy that I am doing so. I said to @londonjustin that I would try his method of planning, what compares planning a novel to the process of producing a computer program. L So I try his method, to be fair I was trying to write a plan as quickly as possible (or maybe that is the true test) so I started planning. One of the things I realised latter is that his plan from what sticks in my memory, Maybe Justin would disagree, but it can be summed up to me as, write the ending and or purpose for your novel, (to inform, tell a particular story, push a moral)to explain the characters, then to form a plot with a focus on the later stages of re-writing and editing.
My normal method of planning is slightly different (though I have only planned one fictional piece) and this plan consists of allowing the thought, it might be a character or a theme to bounce around my head for a day or so. and then to open up my laptop and write 3 pages, a figure though in my last plan turned out to equate to a figure closer to 100 000 words (although I still have not finished the first draft) when I was aiming for something closer 50k (before editing, expanding of detail etc.) But a true plan for me, I can only imagine being 3 pages, typed or handwritten, I do prefer typing thou. Once I have allowed the main ideas to bounce around in my head and I have a plan written out I then start to write. As I made my NaNoWriMo attempt last year I started to discover tactics to write efficiently, the most important being:

Setting goals/word counts: When I am using my preferred (non-write-or-die) program, Q10 (a free download) I set a daily goal (1667 words minimum for Nano) a mini-goal usually something that would result in a self-indulgence, such as a break, chocolate, coffee, tea, lollies, a new lip balm. Pretty much everything I bought for myself last November would be a prize for reaching a certain word count. This towards the beginning of Nano was 500 words, and this tends to be my usual goal (though in retrospect I would have made the goal closer to 1000 for the first week of Nano) this then dropped to 250 as the month wore on, eventually wearing down to 100 words as I tired, became sick and so on, as many Nano writers will ditto. These goals, even when not rewarded reminded me of how much I had done, and served as markers that I had written a decent amount. As someone who gains great pleasure in watching numbers increase this was a very effective technique, also having a word count for how much I had written that day, that session and overall that month. Especially how Q10 translates your overall goal into a percentage is very comforting, did you know that 500words is 1% of 50K! Tiny as it sounds, especially earlier in the month (and I would probably write more now in a Nano like situation) I would write 3000 words, 6% of my Nano goal. And to me this very much felt like an accomplishment!

Prizes: I mentioned prizes before, and incentives for writing can be very effective, prizes don't necessarily have to be especially bought, though that can help. a visit to the supermarket with the aim of buying excessive amounts of confectionary (something I believe you can claim on tax if you are a published writer who gains a profit from writing!) just for you can be an inspiring exercise, that also can help control your sugar intake and make it seem precious rather than a given. But also crude things such as "I won’t have a shower this morning if I don’t write 2000 words" or "I won’t have necessities break until I write another 500 words" just little things like that can keep me writing.

Environment: Environment is very important to my writing; I can’t have anyone I know around me. Even if they are in another room i find it hard to settle down with the sounds of movement, or TV in another room. So getting up early and staying up late was a necessity for a lot of my writing. Also going to the library or a cafe when no one I knew was there was an important factor; also I had to have dedicated writing spaces to get a lot of work done. When I went I go to the library to write I have a process. There are 2 libraries that I frequent, at one I can easily crash in a bean bag and write, at the other I sit at a desk in a certain spot, because at the library where I avoid the bean bag, I have gone there many times with friends and chatted and mucked around, some of the time sharing a bean bag, So i find that memory a distraction. I also managed to clear enough space for a card table at the bungalow at the back of my house, and there is a powerpoint there too so I could sit for hours singing angst punk rock songs and eating chocolate as I wrote without fear of being embarrassingly interrupted, and the humidicots, and other sciency equipment there from when My dad did orchid flasks is a really cool place to write... although slightly terrifying! I know that if I went there with a friend and just sat around, that it would be harder to work there.

Word wars: Many lunch times I sat with one of My Nano buddies and we wrote for about 45min of our lunch break, sitting side by side and peeking at the other's word count. Also we battled it out once via txt message one evening. Now with my recent purchase of "write or die" and the wonderful writers I have met though twitter. Word wars seem to be even more accessible and as I get more into writing again, most likely a very helpful community of peers to bounce Ideas off.

Word processor: I wrote the beginning of my Nano using word, big mistake, the red and green squiggly lines (I know they can be turned off) slowed down my writing immensely. Also the desire to format, I would recommend notepad, q10, write or die, anything that *does not* have spell check or formatting options. Editing I have found should be put as far away from writing as possible.

Make sure you have meds: If you suffer a chronic condition, stress gives you headaches, makes you more prone to get sick, have allergies make sure you have plenty of your drugs of choice. Aspirin is a necessity in my writing kit as I suffer from migraines especially when I’m stressed or tired. And I keep lemsip close for another signs on illness. I try my best to identify when I am feeling crook, so I can take necessary action, a break, sleep if I have the time, or meds. A migraine can knock me out for a day if am not careful but awareness plus knowledge of things I can do to help, kept me writing with minimal disruption from my body.

So those are a few of my writing tactics, overall, and I think this next thing applies to everyone, I think the most important tactic is Identifying your own personal strengths and weaknesses and using them to formulate tactics to help you write is a must, plan, even if you disregard it, the worst that could happen is you lose a few hours of your life, and back to Justin’s planning method, I think its great overall, and I am definitely going to use it for my essay planning. For fiction though, I don't think its right for me. I highly recommend you try it though, especially if you are a writer who also has knowledge of programing, as many I know surprisingly do!