Nettle & Bone

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

Nelson Mandela once said that it always seems impossible until it’s done. This book is a fairy tale about an impossible adventure in which princess Marra seeks to help her sister. The sister is stuck into a forced marriage with a king who is torturing her. He is protected by an immortal and almighty fairy godmother and other less visible forces, like an army, and is untouchable. Marra will start a decades long journey where he’ll find support by people and entities with magical powers. Will they succeed on time? After all, a recurring theme in the book is that you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.

If I were to compare it to other books, Nettle & Bone is reminiscent of Uprooted by Naomi Novik and the first Witcher novel.

Nettle & Bone is an excellent little fantasy with a simple idea and a complex magical system based on millenias of superstition and fairytales. It’s written in a young adult style but covers adult themes like domestic violence. Not sure how to classify it. Fantasy, I guess.

5*/5

Tsarigradsko Shose 1

~ Veselin ~ 9 Comments

One of the most important boulevards in Sofia starts with this house. There’s a newer building at the corner, called Tsarevets (Царевецъ), and it’s a symbol of Sofia but it’s Tsarigradsko Shose 1A and was built a year later.

I hope this little pink house gets restored to its full glory one day. Maybe not considered old enough yet.

Do I need a break

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
Do you need a break? From what?
View all responses

Some of the best ideas and lightbulb moments I’ve had happened while taking shower or walking outside, so in a sense, when having a break.

A real break for me is when I allow myself to not think about anything. Close the lid early and commit to keeping it closed until tomorrow. Open a book. Don’t expect a lightbulb moment, just surrender to the end of the day.

Cool Tips With Images on WordPress.com

~ Veselin ~ 46 Comments

I have some ideas to share with you, based on my last 24 hours of blogging.

Add Images as Galleries

Have you noticed that when you blog a single image, it’s not clickable and stays small? Like this:

It’s a very large and pretty image but nope, can’t click.

And this is clickable (well, at least clickable from the website veselin.blog):

I used the Image block for the first and the Gallery for the second. So if you want your image to be clickable, use the Gallery instead of Image for single images as well.

You can type /gallery in the editor to quickly find the block. It will appear after /ga or /gal.

You Can Post Photo Comments

This only works when you go to the person’s site and post a comment from WordPress, and not the Reader or the comment notification. The Gutenberg Editor for comments supports adding an Image block where you can copy/paste an address pointing to an image. Just select reputable sources for your images or they might go away soon.

Use Featured Images for Your Posts

The latest version of the Jetpack Mobile app no longer uses the first image from the post on the Mobile Reader and this will likely cause lower engagement with your posts on Mobile if you don’t manually add featured images. The following screenshot shows 2 posts with a featured image, and two without. Despite having a photo on your site, it will only be viewed after a click. Will anyone click a post called “Stesi” with no explanation and no photo? Probably not.

Note that the web Reader is unaffected and will still show your first image as featured without doing this.

Resize Images Before Uploading

It’s very easy to consume all of your space if you don’t resize the photos before uploading them. The default photos that my phone generates are 5-9MB each. Scaling them down to 2000x1500px makes one photo under 1MB and I can upload more than 1000 photos per GB of used space.

Do you have any tips about using images on your blog?