Category Archives: Communication

Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton



I was blown away by this brilliant book; it totally had me hooked. The author puts the boot straight into the curse of moralism as the cause of our obsessive self-critical thinking and resulting inability to be free to be ourselves, and act instinctively instead of regimentally. He cites two modern-day institutions as prime examples that perpetuate moralism: lawyers and the legal system, and the Catholic church; both of which are rich sources of

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Communication, Public Speaking, and Leadership Skills Development at Toastmasters


I’ve concluded that our ability to communicate authentically with other people is the most important life skill that we can possess. We often spend a great deal of our education learning how to analyse, think, solve problems, and understand how things work; but tend to downplay the importance of subjects that teach us how to communicate. The ability to communicate, inspire and influence other people is also a key leadership skill. Whether in business, relationships, or just in our personal lives, our ability to communicate our thoughts, feelings and ideas to other people is absolutely crucial to our success… and ultimately our happiness.

Globe with Gavels and Toastmaster InternationalFor the past couple of years, I’ve been improving my communication and leadership skills as a member of Chatswood Communicators Toastmasters club.  I have to admit that I wasn’t really thinking of becoming a world-class communicator when I first came across Toastmasters. In… Continue reading…

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Writing a book using OpenOffice.org


My first book, on attracting women, was created using the OpenOffice.org 3.1 Office Productivity Suite. I like OpenOffice because it’s free, is community-supported, and has most of the features that I really need to get my job done. Here’s my experience using it on seriously sized projects of over 200 pages.

I recently finished the 3rd draft of a 450 page book, so I know what it’s like to use OpenOffice.org Writer to create and edit a significant work with over 30 chapters, a two-level table of contents, and several pictures. I also used OpenOffice.org Draw for the cover design, and PDF export to generate files to send to Lulu for printing. I was pleased to find that OpenOffice.org was up to the task, but there were a few quirks I had to navigate and some missing features which made the task more painful… Continue reading…

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I lied to the guy from the phone company today


OK, I admit it. I lied today. I don’t normally do that; I’m a terrible liar in fact. I’m sure it goes back to when I was a kid and how my mother could always tell when I was lying. She wasn’t the sort of person you wanted to get on the wrong side of. So I’m badly out of practice. But I’m working on it.

Or rather, I’ve actually been working on becoming a more persuasive and powerful communicator. I’ve joined Toastmasters. I’m doing workshops on public speaking, sales and marketing. I’m reading The 48 Laws of Power. This last one is all a bit Machiavellian for me, and if taken literally the laws involve a lot more deception than I’m really comfortable with. But I’m learning. And today it came in handy.

I decided that time to get ADSL2+ broadband is long overdue,… Continue reading…

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Cassell’s Guide To Written English by James Aitchison

Cassell’s Guide to Written English (Paperback)

By (author) James Aitchison



I read this book because I wanted to improve my writing by gaining a better understanding of the formal structure of written English, so I would know what the rules are and when I am breaking them. The author makes the point that breaking the rules unknowingly will alienate some of your readers, undermine your authority in your chosen subject area, and just plain distract and annoy more pedantic types; so you’d better be aware of when you’re doing it.

The book does an

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The Elements Of Style by Strunk and White

The Elements of Style: 50th Anniversary Edition (Hardcover)

By (author) William Strunk, E. B. White



I’m embarrassed to say that when I decided to become a writer, it was about 18 months before I got around to picking up this seminal work on the craft. To my folly, I had churned out two drafts of my first book, and hundreds of other pages of content for other works before even acquainting myself with the basic wisdom enshrined in this book.

This is a thin book, and deliberately so; one of its main points is

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