Checklists

When publishing a new post on timtimestim:

• wordcount
• update index
• update rss
  • title
  • updated
  • description (with word count!)
  • uuid
  • url
  • make sure that in the header section is changed too

When you come across a hard problem:

• If a friend were to ask you for advice on this issue, what would be the obvious advice to give?(1)

• Set a five minute timer and actually think about the issue during the whole timer.

  Tip: Hold off on proposing solutions while you're thinking.

• If that isn't enough, ask for advice from someone else.

• The most important step: Actually implement your new strategy.

When you're procrastinating on something you want to do:

• Do the smallest thing that still counts as progress. Read a single page, write a single word, do a single push-up. Whatever.
• That's it. You've now done something.

Grammar checking:

• Get espeak to read the story back to you.
• Read through in a different context (eg. On your phone in the website markup, instead of in your text editor)
• Proper use of its vs it's
• Then vs than
• Who's vs whose
• Not ending words with "ed" for some insane reason
• Using the correct word in the right spot (How to check for this? Reading out loud to yourself?)
• Never use a capital to start a dialogue tag unless it starts with a proper noun: ("Thanks," said Tim) is preferred to ("Thanks," Said Tim).
  • This rule applies even when the dialogue ends in a ? or a !
• Start dialogue with a capital, unless it's a continuation of the sentence: Tim said, "Thanks for all the," he paused, "the fish."

Footnotes:

1. And if the advice is to read this list, welcome to recursion! <-