David Turnbull

Last year, I walked 900km (560 miles) across Spain on a trail known as the Camino de Santiago. It’s a challenging enough adventure as it is, but what made things all the more difficult is that, three days into the walk, I felt an uncomfortable pinch in the back of my left heel.

At first, the pain wasn’t severe. It was just irritating — as if someone was lightly pinching the skin whenever I took a forward step — and I was mostly concerned about whether or not the pain would get worse.

Then it got worse.

[Read more…] about How To Walk 900km with Achilles Tendinitis: 9 Tips & Tricks for Achilles Tendon Pain Relief

At the end of 2015, I attempted by first long-distance, solo hike, walking 100km (62 miles) from Apollo Bay, Victoria to the Twelve Apostles, one of Australia’s most famous natural landmarks.

The walk, known as the Great Ocean Walk, proved to be one of the more enjoyable experiences of my life, featuring a range of different environments — cliff tops, beaches, eucalyptus forests, etc — and absolutely gorgeous (and well-maintained) campsites.

Plus, the walk itself is not even that difficult. I’d never walked this sort of distance before in a single stretch (my previous record was about 60km over the course of 3 days), and certainly not by myself. But because of the way the trail is designed, and because there’s plenty of places to refill your water (and even a couple of places to resupply your food), it’s an excellent adventure for anyone looking for a relaxing wander through the wilderness.

But even though the walk is fairly straight-forward, a little planning can go a long way, so I’m going to share everything you should know about the walk, along with my thoughts on each of the available campsites.

[Read more…] about Hiking the Great Ocean Walk: How To Walk 100km from Apollo Bay to the Twelve Apostles

I didn’t learn how to drive a car until the age of twenty-five. A few years ago, if you’d asked me why I hadn’t learned, I would have given you an excuse. “I just don’t need to drive anywhere,” I might have said. Or, “I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

In reality though, I was afraid. The idea of being in control of a large hunk of high-powered metal made me anxious, so I didn’t pursue it.

Why bother putting myself in a situation that made me so wildly uncomfortable?

[Read more…] about Driving Anxiety Tips: How To Overcome Your Fear of Driving

Last year, I spent two months recreating Your First Meteor Application, a video training series about building web applications with JavaScript.

This involved:

• Figuring what worked (and what didn’t) about the original version.
• Completely reworking every second of content from the ground-up.
• Repeatedly scrapping my progress and starting over.

Because, while it doesn’t take much to sit down with a microphone and create a video tutorial, it’s a whole other ball-game to create hours worth of content that is easily understood, looks great, sounds professional, and leaves viewers satisfied that they’ve handed over their money.

With this in mind, I thought I’d share everything that I’ve learned along the way, including some hard-earned but highly actionable tricks.

[Read more…] about How To Create Perfect Video Tutorials: 17 Tips for Professional Screencasting