We all would like to show off our skills in Photoshop because of the amazing things you can do with it. And if you put in enough time and practice, the limit of photo manipulations you can create is limited by the sky, or by how small you can go with your subjects.

(Image Source: Zev)

These are but 12 photos from the portfolio of Zev "Fiddle Oaks", depicting a world much like our own with a slight twist: the subjects are three-inches tall. Join our hero Zev, as he takes you on a tiny man’s great journey.

Read Also: 50 Adorable Photos of Danbo That Make you go Awww!

Build. Gives new meaning to the phrase, building a house of cards.

Air. I love how the character blends into the atmosphere seamlessly, creating a fantasy effect. Also it reminded me of my own dream where I can fly across the world seeking adventure in new worlds.

Around the World. Going on a flight powered by origami cranes must be a lot of fun.

Home Sweet Home. Here’s where Zev’s age gives him an advantage – his imagination is a breath of fresh air. Here’s a fun version of a treehouse, made with broccoli.

Of Springtimes Past. Ferns used to fill the lands in one point in time. This makes it almost a step back in time.

Sail. Are you ready to sail into the wind? Captured in motion: an amazing feat.

Summer Tales. Zev’s processing skill is slick enough to make his manipulation look like a romantic scene from a movie, complete with a boat ride a a candlelit meeting.

Happy Halloween. The cool moment of life that uh, you probably don’t want to experience. On a lighter note, the lighting is rendered completely by candlelight alone.

The Fire. Rise, rise my flames! I command thee (watch where you step).

They Thought the Race. Setting: a branch as a bridge, a creek as a raging river, while the pint-sized hero remains a hero.

From Afar. The squirrel is ready to rumble. Go grandma! (She’s keeping it cool, guys).

Grandfather’s Watch. Ever wondered how he nailed this photo manipulation? Zev is kind enough to explain in this behind-the-scene post!

We’ve neglected to mention something about Zev. He’s the one making all these great photos, and he is only 14 years old. If you are fascinated by Zev’s work, you can visit his Flickr to uncover more of his adventures! What do you think?

You are a webmaster with a killer blog with readers hungrily demanding new content daily. You wake up, head mailbox to see what your faithful content writer has in store for the waiting audience. Through the steam rising from the hot cup of black coffee raised to your lips, the only thing you find is a letter of resignation, effective immediately. Apparently, getting a book deal from a well-known publisher takes away your desire to write blog posts.

If you are a non-writing webmaster, your obvious first reaction is… PANIC! Guess what, you don’t have time for that, you have a blog post to write. So even if you couldn’t write your way out of a can of alphabet soup, calm down and read on.

We have five creative writing tips that will help you to forge ahead until you find a replacement writer.

Recommended Reading: Tips And Tricks For Writing Fast (And Professionally!)

But First…

If you have never learned meaningful research for writing, we need to have a quick chat first. Researching an article or blog post is nothing like going online to find the right fishing reel for bass because:

1. Real research is at least three levels deep (At the very least)
2. Cross-referencing sources to ensure voracity is time-consuming
3. Fact checking statements to include three “official" sources with at least one link for the reader, usually the easiest one to understand

My point is if you make a claim, you have to be able to back it up, so stick to what you know, especially when you are caught in a situation like this.

Read Also: 10 Writing Tips For Bloggers

1. Make Use Of Your Life

Making use of your life makes it easier to reach readers because while you are unique, you are still living on the same planet, experiencing the same emotions, and making the same dumb mistakes as everyone else. Using examples from your life makes you someone that everyone can relate to and feel for. This will go a long way to cover a great many of the mistakes in grammar you may make along the way.

2. Show, Don’t Tell

Show, don’t tell is a trick that creative writers use to help readers use their imagination rather than their analytical reason. Imagery in writing can be difficult, but it can also be fun.

People think in words. We literally hear the words before we speak them. It is like a voice inside our heads telling us what to say. Imagery and ‘show, don’t tell’ allows the reader to see what you say rather than read what you wrote.

An example of this is in the first paragraph of this post. "Through the steam rising from the hot cup of black coffee raised to your lips, the only thing you find is a letter of resignation, effective immediately." Until these bits of imagery, you were merely reading my words.

When you reached this sentence, you began to see the steam, feel the heat of the cup, and realize the shock. Descriptive writing helps visualization.

3. Third-Person Omnipotence

If you are a first time writer, being God-like is the easiest solution to writing without making tense mistakes. Here is an example of a tense mistake.

“They all went to town yesterday. It was an exciting and eventful day. Everyone is having so much fun that half of us slept on the way home."

In case you did not spot the two mistakes, I jump from past to present and them to us.  The easiest form of writing is third person omnipotence. This makes you an ever-present, invisible story teller that knows what everyone is thinking and what is going to happen.

Third-person writing combined with omnipotence gives you complete control. Pick up any Stephen King book to learn more about third person omnipotence. Mr. King is the king of TPO.

4. Creative License

Having creative license is not a license to lie or make up facts. It is simply the writer taking small and reasonable liberties with language, grammar, or an adaptation or interpretation of someone else’s original writing for the sake of creativity and plot destination.

I have taken creative license throughout this post to demonstrate that you do not have to be perfect – just interesting. While the statement, “You could not write your way out of a can of alphabet soup" is an original thought straight out of my pointy skull, we all recognize that it is a variation of someone else’s clever line.

5. Tell A Story

Using an experience out of your own life and tying it together with whatever point you are trying to make about a product, service, or the overall idea of your post makes it easier to get that point across in an interesting and engaging way.

If your post is about using duct tape to fix just about anything and you were once duct taped to a wall as a prank, telling that story in relation to the point of duct tapes versatility would be an excellent idea.

Conclusion

Just remember to take your time, use what you know, and write in the third-person omnipotence style.  If you make references from a recognizable source, do so in a way that does not even come close to outright copying (plagiarism) or you must clearly state who said it first and in what work it was said. Story telling is always an interesting way to write about anything. Try it.

There are plenty of web development applications for Windows system, such as Notepad++, Netbeans, Eclipse, Komodo, Aptana etc. These applications are working fine, and many of my developer friends are using them.

But, if you want to have one that is integrated very well with Windows system at its core, then you need to check out WebMatrix.

WebMatrix is a free, and lightweight web development tools that is developed by Microsoft. It was first introduced in 2010, and designed to simplify the experience in developing web with popular languages like HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript (including jQuery), PHP and ASP.NET.

So, let’s see what WebMatrix has to offer.

Recommended Reading: Top 10 Free Source Code Editors – Reviewed

Installation

Around 2009, Microsoft centralized their web application lines using Web Platform Installer. It is more or less like an App Store or Google Play where you can install Microsoft applications that are designated for Web Development, including the one we are discussing, WebMatrix.

Once you hit Install, WebMatrix will automatically fetch its dependencies including .NET framework, IIS, and MsSQL.

In addition, you might also need to install MySQL for working with PHP application that relies on it, like WordPress. To do so, select the Products tab, and you can find MySQL listed under Databases.

Features

Microsoft includes lots of features in WebMatrix, and here are some of its features – particularly for front-end development.

Web Standard

WebMatrix embraces web standards. By default, it creates a new document with basic HTML5 markup. Optionally, it also allows you to create a new HTML document using the HTML5 Boilerplate from the Template Gallery.

Writing CSS3 syntax is easier. As we are writing the styles, WebMatrix shows auto-complete suggestions for standard CSS3 as well as specific vendor properties. It even shows a description of what the property is used for.

WebMatrix also supports auto-completion for the other languages: PHP, ASP, and JavaScript (including the jQuery and jQUery Mobile)

Open Source Web Applications

Building a web application from scratch is hard, thus many developers prefer extending Open Source web applications. In this case, WebMatrix provides some popular open source projects, like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and integrates the installation process, so that we can run the project faster in fewer clicks.

You can head over to the Application Gallery to see all the list of Open Source web applications that are supported by WebMatrix.

Furthermore, WebMatrix also includes auto code-completion for these web applications. Given the example of WordPress, it shows list of WordPress functions as we are typing.

CSS-Preprocessors Support

CSS Pre-processors allow developers to write more dynamic and maintainable style rules compared to plain CSS, and we have covered about them several times in our previous posts.

If you are avid users of CSS Pre-processors, WebMatrix gets you covered. You can create a new stylesheet document for Sass, SCSS, or LESS along with the syntax highlighting, and auto code-completion.

Device Simulators

If you are developing for mobile, then you probably need to install iPhone/iPad Simulator – by default, the Windows Phone Simulator should have been pre-installed. These mobile simulators come as an extension, which you can find in the Extension Gallery.

CSS Pre-processor Compiler

Lastly, if you are writing CSS Pre-processor, this is a required extension to install, OrangeBits Compiler. It will compile your syntax into plain CSS.

Final Thought

In addition to those we have just discussed, WebMatrix has many more features to offer. So, if you are willing to dig into it further, here are some good references.

• Walkthrough the WebMatrix Features – Microsoft
• Introduction to WebMatrix, a new, free tool for Website Development MSDN
• Introduction WebMatrix for ASP.NET – ASP.NET

In the next post on WebMatrix, we will be developing WordPress, from installation, customization, and deployment. So, stay tuned.