Latest Articles from The Vandal AKA Derek Haines

A Change Of Tempo

In a complete change of tempo for my blog today, I would like to introduce you to one of my extra favourite poets. And naturally with one of my favourite poems of AB ‘Banjo’ Patterson. In the latter years of the 19th century, Australia was fortunate to have two great poets. Patterson and Henry Lawson. They viewed the tough life of colonial Australia in very different lights. Lawson always darker that Patterson. Many of their poems were in response to one another and were regularly published in a journal called The Bulletin in Sydney. So if you are new to Patterson. Enjoy. THE MAN FROM IRONBARK by A.B. “Banjo” Paterson

Can’t Anyone Produce a Printer That Works?

Is there such a thing as a printer that works? While technology has made amazing advances over the last twenty years or more, there is one area of technology that is going backwards at a rapid rate of knots. One would think that after all the years we have had computers, tablets and smartphones, the combined knowledge of Canon, HP, Epson, Brother and all the other printer manufacturers could make a printer that works. I should refine my last utterance to say, a printer that works for more than a year. Almost without fail, every printer I have bought in the last six or seven years has failed to proceed after a little

Inglish

Let’s just ing it, huh? One of the most common word forms in English is ‘ing’. Sometimes referred to as the gerund, present participle or progressive form. It has such a multitude of uses that a single label just cannot be affixed to these amazing three letters. So broad is their use that Michael Swan prefers the simple label of the ‘ing form’ in his wonderful book Practical English Usage. “I am wondering if that book is really that interesting. Having read the reviews, I may not be interested at all. But reading has always been my passion, so I will probably end up buying it anyway. Interestingly though, my friend

Traffic Is King For Self Publishers

Traffic is king for self-publishing. There is no doubt that earning money from self-publishing will become increasingly difficult. The enormous number of books, and especially ebooks, which are now published each and every day are flooding the market and making it extremely difficult for a self-published author to get noticed and by extension, to sell books and make money. However, as self-publishing is by definition simply a new way of trying to sell a digital Internet product, perhaps it is time to go back to the basic idea of Internet marketing and forget about actually selling books. The difference in logic is that instead of blasting social media platforms with book promotion posts to