Good Things Come...

It's been a while since I last posted here.  January 2010, from what I see on the last post.

And things have changed again.

This year, 2011, my Twitter emergency information relaying had to take in Israel's Mount Carmel fire (December 2010), then Australia's Queensland and Victorian floods, plus the Christchurch New Zealand earthquake and Japan earthquake and tsunami.

In the middle of the year I found my role had been acknowledged in two separate studies into the use of social media in emergencies.  One study to do with the Queensland floods, the other to do with the Victorian floods.

Finally to this past week...and I got the surprise of my life one night mid-week discovering that "A Question of Theories" had been distributed by Lulu.com into both the Apple iBook store and Barnes & Noble's Nook Books.

My missus took ages to get the smelling salts to work on me after I fainted from the shock.

Then SHE took a look and I had to revive HER.

Thank you, Lulu.com.

The ebooks even have ISBNs, so this novel is now officially published, going a step beyond the previous print-on-demand self-publishing.

It's been a five-year journey since I first wrote "A Question of Theories" in 2006.  Finally, the journey has crossed a milestone.  A big milestone.

Though I'm still trying to get the shocked look off the missus...she keeps mumbling:  "Omigod...he did it..."

Hang on a sec while I go faint again myself...

So Much Changes...

One year after the last post on this particular blog, so much has changed.

Almost a year ago, Black Saturday and the associated bushfires changed Victoria Australia forever.

It also changed my direction entirely.

In those six weeks of the Victorian bushfires, I ended up suddenly having to learn to use social media, first to help my niece, then my state. On Twitter, as @geehall1, I became a relayer of emergency and CFA information.

In the months after that, I turned to the social aspect of social media as part of the Tweetupmellers/Twums tweetup, becoming a video interviewer and delving into producing video content from those interviews.

One year later, the @geehall1 social media properties include accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, identi.ca and Plurk, to varying degrees.

In the end, a whole new direction was taken.

That has meant my Terrorgard serial was postponed to an undefined later date.

Boy, what a difference a year made, especially when I look at the last sentence of the post I did almost exactly one year ago.

Yesterday, January 29 2010, I finally added two dotcom domains to the list.

With a greater profile in social media and a following of over 500 on Twitter, there's a lot of potential and a few opportunities yet to explore. I consider it an ongoing journey worth following, which may help things with my novels a bit further down.

In the meantime, there's still geehall.blogspot.com and geehall1.blogspot.com, used for tech/social media and bushfire/emergency blogging respectively on a non-specific schedule.

For near-daily stuff on tech/social media and the rest of my social media endeavors, there's now also georgehallonline.com and www.geehall1.com.

And it's a whole new year AGAIN.

Let's see where it takes us.

Back to Blogging...

Hard to believe it's been over a year since my last past here. It ended up being a busy year, with my partner, Maria, recovering from a broken ankle sustained in December 2007. Baby David is now over two years old, work has settled down after a transitional period and we're about to see the other two lads off to school tomorrow.

Since my last blog post, the free ebook idea for "A Question of Theories" has actually borne some results, and it is effectively a little sleeper hit. I posted, almost a year ago, versions of the novel to Memoware, Feedbooks, Scribd and a couple more sites. Memoware alone has now reached well over 3,000 copies downloaded, Scribd has been viewed 700 times, Feedbooks nudging around 400, while the remainder add perhaps another hundred or so.

Not bad for around seven or eight months.

There seems to have been a bit of a spike in downloads of it in the months before the American Presidential Election.

As an interesting aside...one of Australia's morning shows aired a "blooper" reel of Dubbya's best lines. Anyone watching this would have agreed...Dubbya has a great future ahead of him as a comedian.

President Obama keeps his Blackberry, although he's probably had to put up with a few high-level security additions to it. But it's good seeing a Prez who knows his way around social networking and gadgets.

I gotta admit, although I just recently got an iPhone on a two-year plan, I'm looking forward to seeing the Palm Pre when it hits Australia.

It's a whole new year.

Blood Of The Terrorgard Chapter Five - iPaper

Here's the latest chapter hot off the word processor...

From next chapter onwards, I'll be merely posting the link to the scribd hosted iPaper chapters, so the main blog page isn't over-burdened with longer loading times.

Read this doc on Scribd: Blood Of The Terrorgard Chapter Five

Blood Of The Terrorgard Chapter Four - iPaper

Read this doc on Scribd: Blood Of The Terrorgard Chapter Four

Blood Of The Terrorgard Chapter Three - iPaper

Read this doc on Scribd: Blood Of The Terrorgard Chapter Three

Blood Of The Terrorgard Chapter Two - iPaper

Read this doc on Scribd: Blood Of The Terrorgard Chapter Two

Blood Of The Terrorgard Chapter One - iPaper

Here's the first chapter redone in iPaper format:

Read this doc on Scribd: Blood Of The Terrorgard Chapter One

Brief Interlude

In exploring new ways to promote Terrorgard and A Question of Theories, I came across www.scribd.com, a document-sharing site which has this lovely format called iPaper, which allows documents to be embedded in a website and read by any flash-capable browser.

I've since uploaded A Question of Theories to iPaper and can now allow a free version of the book.

A Question of Theories is still for sale through Lulu, so I'm using the free version to help promote it.

I've also started uploading the first chapter of Blood Of The Terrorgard to this format, and within a few weeks, I'll start placing iPaper versions here on this blog.

It's a nice way to read an ebook.

Read this doc on Scribd: A Question of Theories

Now a Proud Father

Something a little different this time round. At 8.34am Melbourne time November 2, 2006, I finally became a dad. My son David Gabriel Hall was born.

Now, does anyone know where I can get some cheap cigars?