Mike O'Toole

What is the best exterior door for your home? meta-description: The exterior door is the gateway to your home. There is a huge choice of styles and materials out there so if you want to pick the right one for you, read on.   PVC and aluminum exterior joinery is a growing trend in the domestic market ( click here ). One reason for this is the precision engineering that goes into the manufacture of the units and the long, maintenance-free life. When it comes to choosing the best type of door, you should weigh up the pros and cons of the types available. The advantages of an aluminum entrance door Aluminum is lightweight, it doesn’t rust, and it is 100% recyclable—great news for the environmentalists. For use in building elements such as doors and windows, the aluminum is alloyed with other metals such as silicon and magnesium to give it extra strength. To make a door, the aluminum alloy is extruded into hollow sections, which are then powder coated and fixed together to fo...

Outdoor Living Whether you have a large suburban garden or a small backyard in the City, your outdoor space is vital to the enjoyment of your home. More than ever, people are turning their outdoor spaces into living areas where they can eat, drink or just relax. It is a place where you invite friends for a party and a barbeque. Furniture is a vital element to outdoor living, just as it is to living indoors but the big difference is that outside your furniture is open to the weather, and whilst wood and ironwork can be protected, special consideration needs to be given to the soft furnishings Spring is in the air With the onset of Spring our minds begin to turn to work that needs to be done in the garden, and often a substantial part of that work is the maintenance and/or possible replacement of garden furniture, which can prove quite expensive if we’re looking to replace items such as garden benches, dining chairs and table, loungers, garden swings, etc. Budget is a big consi...

Back in the days before COVID-19, the biggest threat to the future of the planet was Climate Change. It still is, we just don’t talk about it anymore, but the day will come when we will all turn our attention back to the threat of global warming and what we, as individuals, can do to improve our carbon footprint.   Is there such a thing as an Eco-friendly heating device? It is generally considered that the most eco-friendly form of heating is geo-thermal, where the heat source is the Earth itself. Water is pumped through tubes buried deep in the ground where the temperature is a constant 7 to 24 degrees Celsius and then brought to a surface mounted heat exchanger, which works like a refrigerator in reverse, providing heat to your home for free! Sounds great doesn’t it, but there are two big issues with this. First you need the land to install the pipes and then there is the cost of installation. It is this that puts most people off, as the pay-back period can be as much as 20...

Whether you’re looking for a vibrant, cosmopolitan city or a quiet, picturesque location, Canada has it all. With the second biggest landmass in the world, and the 38 th largest population (36.5 million – just over half that of the UK), it could be described as pretty sparse. The vast majority of people live along the southern border with the United States in the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta, with 40% living in Ontario alone . Canada is a place to visit any time of year—whether it is for relaxing by a lake on a sunny afternoon or skiing up in the Rockies. Do I need a Visa? If you are traveling from a Visa Exempt Country , you will only need your passport to enter Canada, but if you are flying into a Canadian airport you will also need an eTA—Electronic Travel Authorization—which can be obtained from the Government of Canada website. The process of applying for an eTA is fairly straight forward; if you follow the link all the information is on the ...

Cold Blooded, which BNBS published in 2016, is the sequel to Rings of Smoke, I edited this book and provided the blurb and came up with the chilling strapline from the Hippocratic Oath:  If  it  is  given me to save a life, all thanks.  But  it may also be  within my power  to take a life. Synopsis This is the story of a serial killer (Leonard Fitch) who escapes the clutches of the law and almost certain death in a fire at his Lakeland lodge, to start a new life (and with it a continuation of his killing spree) in America. The police had closed the case on Fitch, believing him to be dead, but a birthday card sent to his last “victim” twelve months after mysteriously releasing her alive causes quite a stir. The card was sent from Boston, Massachusetts, raising doubts as to its authenticity, but when the handwriting analysis comes back with an almost certain match the case is re-opened. Set in the 1970’s, means of identification were limited and...

Meta description: In less than three years, Fortnite Battle Royale has become one of the leading eSports in the world today with over 250 million users. Let’s see why? Keywords: Fortnite Battle Royale , fortnite battle royale world cup, fortnite world cup, eSports betting, From its humble beginnings in the Epic Games studio in September 2017, Fortnite Battle Royale has taken video gaming and eSport to a whole new level, being second only to League of Legends as the most popular eSport game (as of February 2020). With Season 2 of Chapter 2 drawing to a close, the world eagerly awaits word of when we can expect to see Season 3 emerge. So, where did it all begin? Origins Epic Games first released Save the World in September 2017 as a survival game for up to four players. Later that year, it released “Battle Royale,” a game for up to 100 players. After critical acclaim, Epic followed up with Creative a year later. This differed from Battle Royale in that the players could create t...

If you have just set up a website or a blog, you will no doubt have been inundated with emails and posts telling you how good your site looks, but you need help. Then they continue to tell you how they can get you ranking on page one of Google within 3 months for less than $200 per month. Do not jump at this opportunity until you have done some research and looked at the alternatives, the professionals in the SEO field such as PRable , before committing to anyone. You can find a company that suits your business and budget by visiting comparison sites like The Manifest , which lists their top 100 SEO agencies based on customer feedback. What is SEO? If you are new to website creation, you will probably be aware of Search Engine Optimization, but maybe you don't understand the importance of it in relation to your site? SEO is what brings people to your website without having to advertise. It is essentially how Google and other search engines view your site and if you want to ran...

I decided to post this because, when applying for writing gigs, most of my work has been published under different names. I have written as Veda for my Decorama and Baby Knows Best shops and under my wife's name, Diane O'Toole, on her author blog .  I have also written content for countless clients' blogs or websites with great success, but you will not see my name attached to any of them. So I decided I would post them here, on my old blog. It is not available to everyone, only by invitation, so the text should not show up in any plagiarism check. Copying any of the content is, therefore,  forbidden to protect my clients' interests. As a ghostwriter, I have to work to the style guide presented, which can be the Chicago manual, AP or the client’s own bespoke guide. Usually, there are strict requirements on where to place keywords and links, the number of keywords, and where to source images from. Sometimes, this can be quite restricting, especially if there is no leeway...